This weekend I was fortunate to speak to a highly motivated group of delegates from around the globe at the Ivy League Model UN Conference (ILMUNC) in Philadelphia.

Under the conference theme of “Building Bridges, Not Walls,” delegates were exposed to a host of critical global challenges while focusing on “building relationships and understanding, fostering collaboration and cooperation, and creating lasting change.”

Coming on the heels of the International Day of Education, the timing for engaging with motivated youth on global sustainability challenges was perfect.

I delivered a talk on the global food waste challenge, showing the linkage to the multiple Sustainable Development Goals while seeking to inspire these individuals to became agents for food system transformation – and in particular change leaders for food waste reduction.

I framed the discussion around five keywords: scale, value, opportunity, ambition, and leadership; the transcript is below:

Good morning delegates.

You all know that the world is at a critical juncture on myriad social and environmental challenges that we seek to address through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

And unfortunately we are moving in the wrong direction on many of them.

I want to speak with you today about one of them – the global food waste challenge – which is critically linked to all of those Goals – especially food security, climate change, and biodiversity.

And one that each of us can positively impact.

And I’ll do that in the form of a handful of keywords that I hope will not only stay with you after today, but also inspire you to become agents for food system change – and particularly change leaders for food waste reduction.

First, Scale.

Currently, the world is losing and wasting 30 to 40% of annual food production.  Some estimates are higher.

We’re wasting over a billion tonnes of food each year. 

Think about that – what business do you know that could survive at that level of inefficiency?

This despite the fact that roughly 800 million global citizens are hungry, and over 2 billion suffer from nutrient deficiencies.

If you can believe it, despite all of the technology we have today, and our ability to connect and share information with anyone across the globe instantly, we are producing more than enough food to feed everyone – and yet global hunger is now increasing after many years of decline. 

How can that be?

It is a colossal disconnect – and a moral and ethical failure.

But let’s go deeper.

From an environmental standpoint, the food system accounts for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Food loss and waste alone accounts for 8-10% of all global emissions.

If ranked as a country, food waste would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions behind the US and China.

Further, 2023 was the hottest year on record, as was the 9-year period from 2015-2023.

A recent paper in the journal Science noted that “even if all non–food system GHG emissions were immediately stopped and were net zero from 2020 to 2100, emissions from the food system alone would likely exceed the 1.5°C emissions limit between 2051 and 2063.”

Quite simply, we cannot solve the climate crisis without sharply reducing global food waste. 

And let’s go even deeper.

Agriculture consumes about 70% of the world’s freshwater annually.  So by extension, food waste accounts for about a quarter of all water used for agriculture (that’s trillions of gallons).

Our food system also degrades soils and leads to deforestation and biodiversity loss, plastics pollution, and ocean pollution.

And scientists increasingly warn of cascading risks from emissions-driven tipping points to Nature’s systems.

Today, we are failing to feed a population of 8 billion while overshooting Earth’s biocapacity.

And yet in 25 years, we will need to feed 2 billion more citizens, and we will need to do so within planetary boundaries.

It’s a pretty unsettling picture isn’t it?

This is the ultimate global case of needing to do more with existing resources with far less negative impact. 

So let’s step back and consider: Why do we lose and waste so much food globally – and how do we as consumers tolerate and enable it? 

This goes to our second keyword today: Value

At core, I believe excessive food waste is a valuation problem:  we simply don’t value our food resources properly.

The developed world has rapidly transitioned to a culture of abundance regarding food since World War 2.

Today, many nations like the U.S. are blessed with abundant food supplies.

We have a “big” mindset when it comes to food.  We expect – and value – large portion sizes.

We expect perfection – beautiful, blemish-free produce of uniform shape and color.

Food surrounds us – we can obtain it virtually anywhere, so we expect 24×7 availability and excessive variety.

Our food is also relatively inexpensive, and we can have it delivered with just a few clicks – further reducing our engagement with food.

And disposal is easy and cheap.  And invisible.  We don’t see the downstream effects of our wasted food.

So together all of these factors – especially our love of convenience – enable a culture which has normalized food waste:  it has become easy for us to simply discard food and purchase more.

Producers and retailers feed this mindset.  At a high level, we have a reinforcing cycle of overproduction and excessive waste, depriving needed nutrition to millions while often pushing low-quality calories to others through donation programs.

All of this comes at a great cost for people and planet; unconstrained by the fact that we don’t have true cost accounting for our food – the deep externalities of food waste are largely not factored in by food organizations.

So a key question for us to consider regarding our role in the food system is:

How do we move from a culture of abundance to a culture of responsibility?

And what is our role – your role – in this transition?

This brings us to keyword three: Opportunity.

We all know that food is central and critical to all that we do.

Food is fuel.  We gather over it, we share it.  It’s deeply personal.  It is at the heart of cultures.  It is essential for life.

Food connects everything.

The central and critical nature of food also means opportunity for change – to clarify, an essential opportunity for transformational change.

And this is where we all can contribute.

Food waste is a nexus issue. 

The world has a global food waste reduction goal – Target 12.3 of the SDGs, which calls for a 50% reduction of food waste by 2030. 

By sharply reducing food waste, we can:

  • Free excess food resources to address food insecurity
  • Reduce emissions that drive global warming
  • Reduce water consumption
  • Reduce deforestation and biodiversity loss, and
  • Reduce ocean acidification and plastics pollution

We can also free up resources, including labor and human capital, to address the root causes of poverty.

So there is a huge multiplier effect in food waste reduction – one that we can all drive, and one that we must embrace.

And this brings us to keyword four: Ambition.

Food waste is a solvable problem.  As the UN says:  Mission Possible.

But we need urgent, collaborative action to drive that change.

And we all need to change our behavior toward our precious food resources.

So at this critical juncture for humanity, I think we need to ask ourselves:

Do we care enough about the health of people and planet?

Can we find the ambition and the collective will to drive food waste reduction and change for a sustainable food system?

In my sustainability classes at Penn we take an experiential approach – we start with recognizing the signals of the need for food waste reduction and food system change.

This might include highly visible examples of food waste, or the coexistence of excessive food waste and hunger, or pollution from food packaging, or extreme weather events related to emissions-driven warming.

I ask you to stop and think for a second – how many such signals have you experienced in the past month?

And then we reflect deeply on those signals and the systemic drivers behind them.

We seek to harness our emotions to address those drivers in a positive way rather than passing them by.

And then we engage from a perspective of caring – thinking about how we can take action, and how we can influence change in our circles – with family and friends, at school, in our religious groups, and at work and professional settings.

We seek to activate, and scale, the power of one. 

Which brings us to our fifth and final keyword: Leadership.

How can you be a leader of change on food waste reduction and food systems transformation?  How can you maximize your impact?

I’d like to offer a few suggestions:

First, learn as much as you can about the scope and scale of the global food waste challenge.  Get involved.  Make the connection between food waste and climate change, food insecurity, and biodiversity loss.

Recognize – and embrace – the signals.  When you see cases of excessive waste and food system dysfunction, reflect on them, question the drivers, and think about how you can change them. 

How can you disrupt the dysfunction through your everyday actions?

Educate – help to de-normalize food wasting behavior and normalize food waste reduction behavior.  Make the impacts of food waste visible to others – because while we may not see the downstream impacts of food waste:

  • Those experiencing hunger do.
  • And those in vulnerable countries who are experiencing emissions-driven disruptions to agricultural production and rising sea levels certainly do.

Leverage the power of stories to accelerate collaborative actions on food waste reduction.

Raise your expectations of food organizations – are they taking responsible actions to reduce waste?  Have they set goals for food waste reduction, and are they reporting on their progress?  Do they have emissions reduction goals?  Are they making responsible use of excess food resources? 

Are they contributing to a sustainable food system or perpetuating costly dysfunction?

Ask questions.  Support vendors demonstrating authentic action to transform the food system, such as upcycling companies which turn byproducts from one production process into new high value food products.

Apply those same questions while seeking to drive change with your peers, and in  your organizations.  Be an internal change leader: Communicate that food waste reduction efforts bring triple bottom line benefits with strong ROI.  And they inspire the workforce.

Raise the issue with policymakers.  Support legislation for food waste reduction.  And support the recently released Draft National Strategy for Food Loss and Waste Reduction.

Think prevention at scale.  The best thing to do to reduce food waste is to prevent it from occurring in the first place.  Doing so avoids all of the externalities associated with growing and moving food from farm to retailer to consumer to landfill.  That’s 80% of the GHG load.

A few years ago, Marco Lambertini of the World Wildlife Fund said:

“Few people have the chance to be part of truly historic transformations.  This is ours.  We have before us a rapidly closing window for action and an unparalleled opportunity…”

He added: “We can be the founders of a global movement that changed our relationship with the planet, that saw us secure a future for all life on Earth.  Or we can be the generation that had its chance and failed to act, that let Earth slip away.”

His comments provide an excellent frame for how we can think about the imperative of food waste reduction and broader food system transformation.

So the next time you experience a signal regarding food waste, please, embrace it.

The UN is leading a comprehensive effort to transform food systems to accelerate progress toward the SDGs – to ensure that we meet the essential challenge of feeding the global population in 2050 in a sustainable and equitable manner.

Halving global food waste is integral to meeting that challenge.

And global security rests on meeting that challenge.

I urge each of you today to think about how you can lead change for food waste reduction and a more sustainable food system. 

And to be bold in your approach.

Because a key risk on food waste is not just inaction, but slow action.

Incremental action isn’t good enough.  Incremental is insufficient.

Leading change on food waste reduction is a great way to maximize your personal impact for driving positive social and environmental change. 

And for creating a more equitable, sustainable world.

There is much talk in the food system and sustainability space today about moonshots for change.

I prefer to think of the food waste reduction challenge as an Earthshot. 

A unique, and essential opportunity to simultaneously benefit food security, climate change, and biodiversity.

And in the process benefiting global security. 

So to restate our five keywords:

Scale.  Value.  Opportunity.  Ambition.  Leadership. 

Food waste is a crisis of global scale, driven by improper valuation of food resources; an essential opportunity for sustainable change, requiring ambition, urgency and transformational leaders.  

So as you leave here today – here is a challenge to consider:

How can you be an influencer for food waste reduction?

How can you create the Earthshots for reducing global food waste, and for creating a more sustainable, equitable, resilient food system?

Thank you.