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.
