It’s an image that still stands out in Kathryn Bender’s mind: A shopper walking out of a store with four bags of groceries, dropping one of them, and just leaving it there in the parking lot.
It’s an image that still stands out in Kathryn Bender’s mind: A shopper walking out of a store with four bags of groceries, dropping one of them, and just leaving it there in the parking lot.
You probably don’t know anyone who would do this — or at least who realizes they’re doing it. The jarring scene she described was an illustration in the documentary “Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story,” and Bender, an assistant professor of economics in the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, said it’s one of the most impactful messages she’s seen.
“That’s essentially what we do with wasted food,” she said.
In new research published in the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, Bender and several research collaborators found that household food waste in the United States shot up an alarming 280% in one year. They surveyed adults around the country from early 2021 to early 2022, so this represents a slice of time from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to after restrictions had eased. The researchers said this was part of the reason for the spike.
Read More: University of Delaware
Findings from a national survey conducted by a team including UD researcher Kathryn Bender suggest the country's efforts to reduce food waste are not going particularly well. (Photo Credit: Lerner College Staff)
