Data from: Cost-effectiveness of four food waste interventions: is food waste reduction a "win-win?"

The data archived here are the raw data required to reproduce all analysis presented in a manuscript currently in press at Resources, Conservation & Recycling.

Read, Q. D. & Muth, M. K. (2020). Cost-effectiveness of four food waste interventions: is food waste reduction a "win-win?" Resources, Conservation & Recycling, in press.

This dataset is intended for use with the code archived at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4021655 . Please refer to the README.md file in that repository for instructions on how to download the data and reproduce the analysis.

The data archived in this repository are from a variety of different sources. As much as is practicable, they are presented here in their raw form as they were downloaded, without any processing. All processing steps can be replicated using the code archived in the accompanying code repository.

At least 30% of food is wasted during the journey from farm to processor to retailer to consumer in the United States, accounting for an estimated 20% of the environmental impact of the food system. The food waste problem is well characterized, but solutions are not: there has been little rigorous comparison of the costs and potential benefits of food waste reduction interventions. Food waste reduction is often described as a “win-win,” benefiting consumers, the environment, and businesses’ bottom line. We present a method for evaluating this claim by accounting for the costs and environmental benefits of food waste reduction. The procedure involves assembling data on costs and efficacy of the intervention, scaling the costs up to the national level, estimating the quantity and value of food waste averted, and finally estimating the potential averted environmental impact. We apply our method to four representative nationwide interventions: consumer education and public awareness campaigns, spoilage prevention packaging for produce and meat, standardization of date labels, and foodservice waste tracking systems. The estimated annual cost of each intervention varied from $126 to $595 million. The environmental cost-effectiveness of the interventions varied two- to threefold (for example, 6 to 16 kg CO₂ reduced per $1 invested). Outstanding questions include how to scale interventions to the national level and how to address the mismatch between who incurs the costs of implementation and who benefits. Our method can be adapted to waste interventions across the food system and in countries beyond the United States.