Top: Image courtesy Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment

Unsold food rates have decreased by 30% — the largest reduction ever recorded — since 2019 among food retailers on the West Coast, according to a new report from the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment (PCFWC), the West Coast’s public-private partnership focused on reducing food waste by 50% by 2030, and the U.S. Food Waste Pact (Pact), the national voluntary agreement for food businesses focused on reducing food waste through precompetitive collaboration and data sharing. “By analyzing anonymized data from business signatories, PCFWC and Pact resource partners ReFED and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) determine the direction of intervention pilot projects and other precompetitive collaborative efforts,” explains a ReFED blog. The report also establishes national baselines for food waste generation at retail and corporate foodservice businesses, the first datasets of their kind, which will be used to track future progress. ReFED and WWF are publishing the first year of U.S. Food Waste Pact national retail data, as well as the first year of national foodservice data. These two datasets will enable other businesses around the country to track how their own efforts measure up. The report identifies that national retail unsold food accounts for $42.3 billion in lost sales and shines a light on food waste reduction as a critical business strategy for cost savings.