At my youngest child’s daycare, in Munich, Germany, parents are asked to fill in a chart at least a week in advance noting any specific days the child will be absent, like for scheduled travel. This allows the caterers to reduce the amount of food they prepare and serve, so that there’s less likelihood of leftovers. My middle child’s preschool puts reusable containers out at the end of each day and parents are encouraged to take leftovers from lunchtime home with them and return the containers the following morning. And all three of my children’s educational institutions have reusable plates and cutlery for every meal provided, without any single-use utensils.

These positive food-waste practices in Germany — where I now live after having grown up in the United States — seem to support the data suggesting that the European Union is more effectively reducing its food waste than is the U.S. Indeed, even as Americans have grown increasingly aware of the problem and the government has made commitments to reduce the 40% of food that goes uneaten, recent studies show that food waste in the United States is actually increasing. In April 2023, ReFed, an organization dedicated to combating food waste, reported that the amount of uneaten food in the U.S. has grown 4.8% since 2016. By contrast, food waste has decreased in the EU during this same period.

TERMS TO KNOW

Plate waste: Food that is served, uneaten and then thrown away

Not quite. Within the European Union, the average student produces 19.3 kilograms of food waste on an annual basis, around 9% of total food waste. This number is roughly the same percentage of institutional and food service waste as the U.S., which is 8%. Going by these statistics alone, it seems like the U.S. and Europe are on equal footing with food waste issues, in schools at least. But during a thorough assessment carried out in 2018-2019, researchers found that food waste in American school cafeterias was significantly higher than in other Western countries: “Plate waste” (food taken but not eaten and then thrown away) in Sweden, for instance, was at maximum 23% of food served in schools, whereas the United States had plate waste accounting anywhere from 27 to 53% of food served. And from my own anecdotal evidence — working in preschools and schools throughout the U.S. and speaking with friends and family members back in the States — it does seem that European approaches are working better. What can Americans learn from their........

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