TikTokers were horrified to see the true scale of food waste thrown out by Walmart revealed in a viral video.
Filming from the back of a Walmart in Mississippi, Bignuk Terry (@biighomiienuk) unveiled at least a dozen shopping carts stacked with food destined for the trash.
@biighomiienuk It's Sad What y'all think about this #FRFR🤨😒 #fyp #foryourpage #MississippiBoy😏 ♬ original sound - Bignuk Terry
The video shows pizza boxes piled high, carts stuffed with bags of potato chips, and party-sized boxes of bagel bites.
One clip reveals the "best before" date on one pizza brand. The pizzas are said to be best used by July 2023, well after the date the video was actually posted in February 2023.
"Not even out of date," Terry said in the video. "Imagine how many homes and people they could feed."
It's a small window into the amount of food being sent to landfills, which could otherwise have fed Americans who are going hungry.
An estimated 49 million people turned to a food bank or other food assistance program in the U.S. in 2022, according to Feeding America — which equates to an astonishing one in six Americans.
At the same time, food banks struggled to keep up with rising demand coupled with soaring food prices. Forty percent of food banks in Feeding America's network ran on a budget deficit and dipped into reserves to feed their communities in 2022.
And yet there is plenty of food to go around. The U.S. throws out more food waste than any other country, trashing around 130 billion meals worth $408 billion each year.
The UN Food & Agriculture Organization has said that if we stopped wasting all food, we could feed 2 billion people.
It would also prove valuable in the struggle against climate change. When food breaks down in landfills, the resulting anaerobic process releases methane, a potent gas that is 28 times stronger than carbon at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
The air pollution released by food decaying in landfills matches that generated by 50 million gas-powered vehicles.
Diverting food waste from supermarkets to food banks seems like a no-brainer for tackling food poverty and the climate crisis.
"I worked in claims and you wouldn't believe all the s*** we threw away. It broke my heart," one TikToker commented on Terry's video.
"They should give it to the food banks," another wrote.
But another pointed out why risk-averse supermarkets might throw away rather than donate food: "Big companies won't donate food due to the risk of liability and being sued. It's sad."
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