A shocking photo shared by a Walmart employee on the r/Walmart subreddit showed what happens to all the unsold, perishable food during a power outage.
The now-viral photo shows dozens upon dozens of shopping carts filled to the brim with food, waiting to be picked up by garbage collectors. After a 12-hour power outage, the food was deemed unfit for sale and instead sent to landfills to rot.
“All the money is gone,” the employee wrote in the caption.
“Who cares about the money,” one user replied. “The amount of food waste that goes on here is astonishing…”
The food captured in the photo joins the 92 billion pounds of food (or 145 billion meals) wasted in the United States each year.
After being disposed of in landfills, wasted food rots and produces methane, a powerful pollutant that is 28 times more powerful at trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), food waste contributes more methane to landfills than any other type of waste, about 58%.
While consumer-facing companies like Walmart are responsible for a large portion of overall food waste—about 29% when restaurants are included, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council—the majority of food waste in the U.S. actually comes from consumers’ homes, accounting for about 37% of total waste.
Fortunately, there are many ways to curb the amount of food waste in your household. Composting is a simple and effective way to reduce food waste in your household and return essential nutrients to the earth for future food production.
The Cool Down also offers numerous tips on leftover food management and storage that will help you increase the number of meals you can prepare in one shopping trip and extend the shelf life of your food.
In response to the massive amount of food waste photographed by the Walmart employee, Reddit users wished the food could have gone to those in need instead of going straight to the landfill.
The top comment on the post read: “It’s crazy that this is OK, but if you sent out a text message on Facebook and told people they could come by and pick up this food, that would be illegal.”
“Walmart can’t just say, ‘Hey, if you take this food and get sick, it’s at your own risk. We advise you not to eat it, but we’re not going to stop you from doing so,'” one person wrote.
“If they give it away, they won’t be able to make an insurance claim on it,” someone replied.
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