More food than you'd expect goes to waste every day at major retailers, and it's not always the grocery store's fault. One Target employee shared a photo of their store's back room, which was full of food set for the dumpster, sparking outrage from commenters. 

What happened?

"No one in my store is buying salads. It's pretty sad and annoying since I came from an extremely poor family who was in poverty and struggled to get food on the table. Like for the past 4 days, salad wall is fuller than before," the OP said in the post in r/Target, along with a couple of photos.

"Our back room is fuller then ever and most of the produce team are just either helping in dry frozen or meat, or just removing expired food and marking down food or just straight up dumping it out," they added.

"That's a distressing amount of waste. Your Food ETL,TLs, or even your receiver should be working with your store's food donation partners to increase the pick ups," one commenter said. "And yes, there is a store metric for how much each store is donating."

"I don't understand why straight up dumping it out?" shared someone else. "Your store doesn't donate food? My store gets food bank and churches come and pick up donation food everyday except weekends. Only discarding food is out of temp, open packages, expired long time ago and moldy food."

Why is food waste concerning?

Millions of pounds of food are thrown away worldwide each year, despite so many suffering from food insecurity. Feeding America reports that in America alone, 92 billion pounds of food is wasted annually, or nearly 40% will go unsold or uneaten. At the same time, 47 million people in the country struggle to put food on the table. 

On the environmental level, food waste is harmful because it releases potent methane gas in landfills, putting tons of heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere. It also squanders valuable resources, such as land, water, energy, fertilizers, and labor, that were invested in growing the food. The conversion of land for agriculture also reduces biodiversity, making it harder for animals to survive. 

Is Target doing anything about this?

Target has achieved its goal of cutting operational food waste in half across its stores and supply chain facilities, and it has established organics recycling and composting at nearly 1,700 locations. In 2023, it donated almost 155 million pounds of food, equivalent to 113 million meals.

As for the food waste at the OP's store, it could just be an issue at that specific location and not a company-wide problem. 

What else is being done about food waste?

Chains like Kroger and Trader Joe's have been known to give away or donate thousands of dollars' worth of frozen and refrigerated foods after their power went out during a storm, proving that it is possible to rescue food as long as it's deemed safe to eat. 

If you have extra food at home, consider composting it to benefit your garden and save money on fertilizer.

What single change would make the biggest dent in your personal food waste? Not buying food I don't need 🧐 Freezing my food before it goes bad 🧊 Using my leftovers more effectively 🍲 Composting my food scraps 🌱 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

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