The holiday season is a time of joy, celebration, and sometimes indulgence. While it is easy to be caught up in the festivities, it’s principal to think about the waste we may be producing from the festive feasts and shopping sprees. According to ReFed’s estimates, over 300 million pounds of food will become waste during Thanksgiving alone. Food waste is a year-round problem, but it compounds during the holidays season.
What is Food Waste?
Food waste is basically food that is thrown out, despite being edible. Edible food can become food waste at any stage, even during production, but overestimating during grocery shopping is a large contributor to food waste. A great deal of the food waste produced during the holiday season can be avoided with proper planning and consideration.
Within the United States, over a third of perfectly fine food becomes food waste despite there being so many people facing food insecurity problems. The food waste problem shows how many much waste can be avoided if people were more intentional with their consumption.
What Causes Food Waste?
Overproduction and Overspending
“The more the merrier” is a very common phrase, and it is apt for many situations. This saying should not apply to groceries, though. While this phrase is well-intentioned, this type of abundance often leads to uneaten leftovers and discarded food.
Poor Storage
Leftovers are a staple of a holiday dinner. The problem with leftovers comes when they are not properly stored, and the food quickly spoils. Remember to organize your refrigerator and make space for many leftovers so that the food can still be eaten later.
Cosmetic Standards
Many retailers discard fruits and vegetables that only have cosmetic damages, still being perfectly edible. These rejected foods often don’t make it consumers’ eyes, let alone their shopping carts or plates.
Lack of Planning When Shopping
Without a clear plan or grocery list, shoppers tend to buy food in excess. Impulse buys are a major part of American consumer culture, and grocery shopping is a victim of this as well. Shopping without a clear plan causes food waste because it causes people to forget what food they bought. The food ends up expiring before it can be used.
Why Decreasing Food Waste Matters
Reducing food waste will improve many sectors in the long run – environmental, social, economic, etc.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
When food waste enters landfills, it decomposes and releases methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food waste contributes to 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This percentage can be lower if people consider taking their grocery shopping habits more seriously.
Natural Resource Depletion
The number of natural resources used in food production is not discussed often, but the amount of water, energy, and land used is exorbitant. For example, it takes almost two thousand gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef. These resources are used in vain right now because so much of the food produced just ends up going to the landfills.
Solutions to Decreasing Food Waste
Consider Zero Waste Cooking
Zero waste cooking is a method of cooking that uses every part of an ingredient so that no waste is produced. Zero waste cooking implements smaller portion sizes, shopping at local farmers’ markets, and repurposing food scraps. Examples of zero waste cooking include using stale bread to make your own breadcrumbs or making a broth with vegetable scraps.
Meal Planning
Meal planning is an effective and easy way to decrease food waste. Planning out your meals and shaping your grocery list based on that plan is a good method to decreasing food waste. Stick to your grocery list to avoid overconsumption and impulsive purchases.
Donate Excess Food
If you find yourself with surplus food, consider donating it to local food banks or shelters. Many organizations accept unopened, non-perishable items as well as fresh produce and cooked meals. This not only reduces waste but also supports those in need during the holiday season.
Businesses to Support
Instead of shopping at major grocery stores like Walmart or Target, consider getting your groceries at a local farmers’ market. This will decrease the amount of packaging used and emissions used to transport the food to you.
There are also apps like Too Good To Go and Flashfood that allow customers to purchase surplus foods from grocery stores or restaurants at a discounted rate. This is a good option to implement into your grocery shopping routine since it allows for the perfectly edible food to not just immediately go to a landfill.
Making Conscious Decisions the Entire Year
At the heart of the food waste crisis lies a larger issue: our culture of overconsumption. The holidays are often marked by the idea that abundance equates to success and joy. We load our tables with more food than can reasonably be eaten, stockpile groceries as if shelves might run dry, and view extravagance as a hallmark of celebration. While these habits are often born out of good intentions—ensuring everyone feels included, cared for, and well-fed—they come at a significant cost to the environment, society, and even our wallets. This level of abundance becomes a problem when it cuts into the environment and wastes so many of our precious resources.
Consumer culture perpetuates a cycle of overproduction, overspending, and ultimately, waste. We are conditioned to seek out bulk deals, buy more than we need "just in case," and throw out items that don't meet aesthetic or freshness standards. The same mindset that encourages us to buy the newest gadgets and latest trends also fuels the over-purchasing of food. As a result, we treat food as an expendable commodity rather than the precious resource it truly is. This culture values convenience and instant gratification more than getting the full use out of everything we currently have.
This consumer culture isn’t just a holiday issue; it’s a year-round challenge. However, the holidays amplify the problem by normalizing excess. The pressure to provide an over-the-top experience, combined with a lack of planning and awareness, leads to overflowing trash bins filled with completely edible food. And this waste isn’t just about leftovers from our plates—it’s the result of a global supply chain that overproduces to meet our insatiable demand, only for a significant portion to be discarded along the way.
To address food waste, we must first challenge the cultural narratives that drive it. Redefining abundance and success to focus on quality, mindfulness, and sustainability can create a profound shift. Instead of striving for excess, we can celebrate thoughtful consumption—buying only what we need, cooking with intention, and sharing surplus with those in need. Our resources are precious and should be treated as such.
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