McKinsey for Kids:
(Food) waste not, want not
March 23, 2021Interactive
Hey, kids, have you ever considered all the different ways that food goes to waste? Sure, some of us throw the food we don’t finish in the trash or in compost heaps in our backyards, but food that could otherwise go to hungry people gets lost in many other places, as well. In this edition of McKinsey for Kids, we’ll walk you (and maybe your parents and teachers, too) through the life cycle of food—from farm to landfill—and through some of the ways that McKinsey and others are trying to help reduce food waste so that more people can fill their bellies.
The clean-plate club?
You’re at the dinner table, staring down a plate of chicken, rice, and … cabbage? One bite may be all you can manage. (Or you might love it, but it’s one of the foods that kids have told people who ask about such things that they don’t like.)
As you eat, you tell your parents about your day and tune out when they tell you about theirs. It’s a nice meal, cabbage aside. When you’re cleaning up, whatever you don’t finish goes into the trash or the compost heap.
The relatively small amounts of food we throw away after a meal isn’t necessarily that big of a deal on its own. (And composting is good for the earth, so that’s a positive use of food waste.) But think about how it adds up if the people at the house next door, down the street, at restaurants and grocery stores in your town, and all around the world are doing it, too. Globally, a stunning 1.3 billion tons of food is lost or wasted every year—an amount equal to the weight of 217 million elephants!
Ten foods kids claim they hate
))
))
))
))
))
))
))
))
))
))
Asparagus
58 tons of asparagus is thrown out on an average day in the US. How much is that? About the same weight as 6 adult Tyrannosaurus Rex, which were probably also not fond of asparagus (they were meat eaters).
1 of 10
That’s a lot of food going to waste. And the food that households and businesses throw out are only part of a bigger challenge. Chew on this: the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that roughly one-third of the food that’s produced worldwide never gets eaten. But it doesn’t have to be that way—something McKinsey has learned through its work with companies, food banks, and communities around the globe. Here’s some food for thought on how to do better.
Hunger is a big problem
Many of us are lucky enough to have food every day without having to think about where our next meal is coming from. But there are many people who do have such worries. Hunger was a problem around the world before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has now worsened.
Today, more than 50 million people in the United States alone—imagine all the people in Tokyo, London, and New York City together—find it hard to put affordable, healthy meals on the table, according to Feeding America.
How can that be? The world grows more food than is needed to feed everyone, so people really shouldn’t be going hungry. But not all the food produced makes it to people’s plates—or their mouths. There are many steps between the farm and the giant trash heaps called landfills, where garbage is taken, and food can be lost or wasted at any of those steps. For example, say the loaf of 30 slices of bread you see below was making the journey between farm and landfill. Along the way, 12 slices (enough to make six people a sandwich each!) would get wasted. A loaf of bread isn’t all that much food in the grand scheme of things, so imagine how many people could be fed if all that food didn’t go to waste.
Where food gets lost or wasted
As you scroll, you’ll see about how much of the global food supply gets lost or wasted at each step, and how that contributes to the total amount of the world’s food that never gets eaten.On the farm: 11% lost. The farm might grow more food than its workers can harvest, so some gets left in fields. Or, while grains or vegetables are being picked, they could be damaged or spilled—and left to waste.
After harvest: 8% lost. Food might be lost because it can’t be stored safely. It could also be damaged when it’s moved from the farm to a factory (where it’s frozen, canned, or made into another product), or when fresh produce is transported to a market.
During processing: 1% lost. When fresh food like tomatoes are used to make a product like canned soup, some parts of the vegetable might be thrown away for not meeting quality standards. Food can also be wasted because of problems in the factory, like when a machine doesn’t work right and ruins the food it’s processing.
In markets or stores: 6% wasted. A store might order more food than people will buy, so some food could be thrown out because it’s not sold (that’s why everyone looks at expiration dates on milk cartons). Or, if a bunch of bananas get ripe too soon, shoppers might not buy it, leading to more waste.
At home or in restaurants: 10% wasted. Families or businesses might buy more food than they need, or try a new product that nobody likes, so it ends up in the garbage. Food can also go bad before it’s finished—maybe you’ve had milk go sour in your house?
What can be done—and how we have helped
So is that just the way it is? Not at all. We know because we work with organizations that want smart ideas and plans to turn the tables on the food-waste challenge.
Many people who work at McKinsey do it because they like to solve big, hard business problems. Tackling food waste, and ending hunger more broadly, is a somewhat different kind of challenge because it also makes us feel really good about solving both a business and a community issue. Here are some ways our experts in different subjects try to help.
Places we can help
))
))
))
))
))
))
Farming
Our consultants help farmers figure out how to grow more food in the same amount of space or with less water—or reduce the amount of wasted fruits and vegetables in their fields.
1 of 6
Hunger is often an invisible problem, so you might not have thought about how technology can help solve it. But some concepts that businesses have used for a long time, plus some new digital tools, can make a big difference.
One of the newest of these is artificial intelligence (AI), which uses computers that are trained to look at more data than the human mind can process and think about that data like a human would. That can help in changing our society from one that produces a large amount of waste and pollution to a more “circular economy.” (That’s a mouthful—but moving to a circular economy just means that people and organizations think more about recycling and replenishing the world’s natural resources. It’s kind of like the “circle of life” adults sometimes talk about.)
Here’s how AI can be used on farms, in stores, and elsewhere. You’ll see that even though new technologies might be used, they affect things that have been done in the physical world for a long time.
Circular food economies
1. AI could help farmers figure out what needs to be done to make their soil healthier so that it helps food grow better, or it can help them come up with better ways to plan their crops—say, by planting beans in the same soil where they’ve last harvested corn because this switch can give the soil back more of the nutrients that were used up to help the corn grow.2. When food is being stored or processed, AI can help companies sort products like apples that can be sold in grocery stores from those that might be better made into applesauce, for example, to reduce what gets thrown out. It can also be used to improve operations from end to end, so companies use ingredients that are sourced, processed, and used locally whenever possible.
3. Companies that make packaged foods like potato chips could use AI in their food labs or factories to improve how they source ingredients by finding nearby farmers who are growing potatoes using sustainable methods, or to analyze their recipes and processes to identify potential changes that can reduce what gets thrown out.
4. Stores could use AI to predict how much rice customers might buy in the next month, and then order just the right amount so they don’t have to toss out unsold food.
5. The technology could be used to connect companies that might otherwise throw out leftovers with people who might use them for a new business. For example, if a company makes orange juice, it might have lots of orange peels to throw away. But maybe another company could find an innovative way to use parts of those peels, say, to make orange oil that can be used in other products.
6. In recycling or composting plants that deal with materials that are left over after food is processed—the bran that isn’t used after wheat is ground into the flour you use to bake cookies, for instance—AI can help analyze whether the bran is safe for other uses (like feeding animals) and separate it from other waste that can’t be repurposed.
Wasting less and helping feed hungry people
That’s the cutting edge. And we’ve seen charities, like a food bank in Washington, DC, begin doing some of these things to improve the way they plan. Their work is less about reducing food waste in particular and more about finding ways to help as many people as possible in a time of great need. But sophisticated data analytics helped the food bank see where communities had enough food to go around, and where some might need more help—so that they could get food to the people most in need, with the least waste, while also finding new ways to connect with communities hit hard by the pandemic.
Technology can also be simpler and still make an impact. The story of one food bank that asked McKinsey for help shows how.
The Greater Chicago Food Depository, a food bank in the US Midwest, has warehouses that allow it to store things like fruits, vegetables, milk, and cheese. But when it received an unexpectedly large donation of apples from the government, it was a wake-up call: no food bank is going to turn away food that could help hungry people, but this was 12 truckloads of fruit that this food bank didn’t have enough space to store at the right temperature to keep the apples from going bad before they could be given to people. And if the apples went bad, that would be a lot of good food that could end up in the garbage.
McKinsey experts in supply-chain operations showed food-bank workers how big businesses took on similar challenges with the things they stocked. Warehouses can store food for a food bank, but for businesses they can also store products like pens, notebooks, and electronics. And many companies use “forecasting” (a way of looking at what’s happened pretty regularly in the past to help prepare for the future) to decide what they keep in stock in their warehouses and when. They might have more school supplies on hand when kids are heading back to class after a holiday, but when kids are on break and the weather is warmer, they might need to have more grills, sunscreen, and water toys because that’s what people are more likely to order then. Similar approaches could work equally well in different types of warehouses.
These experts also shared other ideas to help the charity improve. And this paid off when the pandemic hit and a lot more people needed help getting enough to eat. The food bank understood where food and other supplies were coming from, as well as what pantries and soup kitchens needed most. That meant it could help connect the dots while continuing to waste as little as possible—and though it’s just one part of the bigger “food system,” the efforts add up to big impact when they’re combined with changes that reduce waste on farms, in stores, and at home. To give a taste of the potential, consider just one special program the food bank helped with, giving boxes of food to families with the support of emergency funds from the government. Over 20 million pounds of food was delivered—which is roughly how much 1,000 school buses would weigh. Of that, how much went to waste? The equivalent of just 10 of those buses.
Bringing it full circle: So what can you do?
If all this has you wondering, “But how can I help, apart from trying to finish my cabbage?” Here are a few easy ideas.
Click each card to learn more
This interactive experience is based on articles and blog posts from McKinsey on food security. It was a collaborative effort from McKinsey Global Publishing, where Richard Johnson turned words into this visual story and then made the illustrations. And then Mike Borruso, Nancy Cohn, Torea Frey, Ryan Hatch, Drew Holzfeind, Stephen Landau, Janet Michaud, Charmaine Rice, Mythili Sankara, Dan Spector, and Nathan Wilson all helped bring it to you.
If you have read this far, we hope you have enjoyed it. Want to tell us what you thought and how we could have made it even more enjoyable and useful to you? Drop a note to our Publisher, Raju Narisetti, at newideas@mckinsey.com.
Explore more
