Bakeries

Food waste

In developed countriessuch as Canada, USA, UK, Australia, and probably others, nearly 50% of all food goes to waste. In other words, there's about as much food in the trash as there is on people's plates.

Bakeries likely play a major role in this.

Typical business practice

The bakery makes large amounts of everything in the morning, in hopes that a lot of customers show up. Anything that doesn't get sold by the end of the day, usually gets thrown away.

On average, this is probably about half of all the food they make. iEstimate based on:

~ Extrapolation from general food waste statistics.

~ Observations from dumpster divers.

~ Unpredictability of customer demand, from one day to the next. (...)( Anyone who worked in a bakery can confirm that some days are really busy and some days are slow, and you can't always predict ahead of time. ) To compensate for this, as a "safety margin", bakeries probably bake about 2x as many goods as they sell.

The economics favor this wasteful practice because:

• Goods are sold for a much higher price than their raw ingredients.
  • Sales make big revenue, but wasted goods make small losses - small in terms of money. Forthe environmenthumanity overall, food waste is major loss.
    • The business would rather risk wasting food than selling out.
      • In some jurisdictions, there are even fines for businesses that sell out.

Why not discount the leftovers instead of throwing them out?

1. Some businesses do, but the sheer volume of day-old goods is higher than people are willing to buy. Most customers want something fresh. (...)( By the way, this shows that consumer choices are to blame for much of food waste. ) But since there are just as many leftovers as there are fresh goods, most leftovers don't get sold.
   • This is especially true in rich & middle-class neighborhoods.
2. Snobby businesses are afraid to tarnish their image by selling sub-par goods.
3. Occasionally, business owners will argue that it's bad practice because:
   • "I don't want to be competing with myself!", or
   • "Everyone will just wait to the end of the day to get everything cheap!"
   • Note: These are not very good arguments in the face of point #1 above. But business owners still make them.

In a theoretical free market, leftovers would never be wasted, because there's always an optimal price to sell them at (instead of throwing them out and getting nothing for them). But this fails in practice, for the reasons above. And also because garbage collection is a public service. Maybe if businesses had to pay to get their trash removed, they wouldn't waste as much.

Why not donate them to poor & homeless people?

Kind explanation

Some business owners do, but:

• Somehomeless sheltersfood banksmight reject the baked goods, because they already receive too many, and because baked goods are mostly empty calories. For some people in poverty, the harder struggle is finding good nutrition.
• The sheer volume of all leftovers might be more than all the local poor & homeless people can eat.
  • Evidenced by: for example: 1% of the population is homeless but 50% of all food goes to waste.
    • Note: Food waste is still a problem, even when there are very few people starving locally. The global food supply is affected, making it harder for people around the world to afford food.

Rude explanation

Business owners might be:

• Too busy, lazy, or biased against the poor
• Afraid of liability
  • This is an unfounded fear, because:
    • Baked goods have a shelf life of several days, sometimes a week. Even when they get dry, stale and hard, they are still safe to eat as long as there is no mold. There are even recipes to make use of stale baked goods.

Solutions

Personal changes

• As consumers, we should ask bakeries to sell their leftovers (discounted), and we should buy them as often as we buy fresh.
• If you feel adventurous, get into dumpster diving. ^{[But don't tell the bakery owners!]}

Systemic changes

• Abolish any laws that issue fines to businesses for selling out.
• Make it illegal for businesses to waste food.
• Project: Convert leftovers into meal-replacement bars for international food aid. ^{[new page needed]}
• (undecided)
  • Make businesses pay (by weight) to have their trash removed.
    • This could discourage food waste (...)( well, to some extent, at least ) without making it outright illegal.
    • For people / residential, trash removal could still remain free (publicly funded).
    • This is already implemented in some jurisdictions.
    • Problem: We'd need an additional policy/law to prevent businesses from locking their dumpsters.
      • Locking is often motivated by fear that everyone else will dump trash in the business's dumpster, which would cost the business money.
        • I'm not sure how justified this concern is for business owners. Residential & public areas have their own garbage bins anyway. The occasional dumping would probably be dwarfed by the business's own trash. But it's possible that many businesses would lock their dumpsters "just in case".
      • Locking prevents anyone from recovering the leftover baked goods, making it harder to solve the food waste problem.