Most Americans order takeout, buy groceries, and dine in restaurants without giving much thought to the systems that undergird it all. From the farms that produce the food to the companies that transport it and the places that serve it, decisions are made at every step of the way that determine how that food is consumed and how much of it is tossed.
Reducing America’s food waste is a passion for Maen Mahfoud, the Sugarman Practitioner in Residence at the Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavior Science and Public Policy at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, who spent his childhood in a low-waste food culture in Syria. He is the founder and CEO of Replate, a nonprofit that develops tech solutions to help airports, corporations, and other large food handlers reduce waste and address food insecurity.
As part of his residency at Princeton, Mahfoud gathered some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the food systems space on campus last month to identify concrete steps to improving the ways we consume, throw out, and think about food.
The convening was held the Friday before Climate Week NYC, giving the participants a chance to gather in Princeton ahead of a whirlwind week of programming and networking to consider what sort of meaningful change is possible to improve America’s food systems. Those who attended included leaders from food recyclers, wholesale distributors, nonprofits, social impact firms, and researchers.
They identified numerous problems: No single entity is responsible for food waste, they noted, and the industry tends to be risk-averse. Data is siloed and opaque, making it difficult to develop holistic solutions. Market prices don’t capture the true cost of food, and incentives favor large-scale food delivery and lower costs over local, more sustainable solutions.
They also noted what is working: Food waste policy is advancing. The issue is “genuinely nonpartisan,” they noted, and many initiatives are underway to tackle food waste at the municipal and organizational level.
“People often compare food in the U.S. to food in E.U. countries, but people don’t realize that the food is the way that it is in those countries because of the law, the regulations,” one person said during the sessions, which were held under Chatham House rules.
The private sector is also showing interest in the issue: Companies are setting and meeting waste-reduction targets, and investors are backing waste-reduction efforts.
During a fireside chat, Ida Posner ’12 discussed growing alignment among investors, industry, and policymakers. Posner, a strategic advisor to the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh, leads its portfolio of investments in food waste solutions.
She highlighted the recently formalized Zero Food Waste Coalition, which is advocating for federal solutions such as a change in food date labels that would reduce the amount of food that is tossed because the expiration date is premature.
“The exciting thing is that, in this environment that we’re in, people still want to work on food waste. It’s nonpartisan,” Posner said, adding that as states pass their own legislation on food waste issues, companies are advocating for a federal standard. “You don’t want 50 different rules if you’re Walmart.”
In the end, the convening’s participants concluded that plenty of alternatives to the existing food system already exist. The challenge is to find ways to connect, finance, and scale them.
“We realized that we don’t necessarily lack solutions. We lack the connective tissue to make them work at scale,” Mahfoud said. “The opportunity is to align incentives, data, contracts, and the people doing the work so that better food-system choices become easier, financially viable, and repeatable.”
Princeton SPIA at U.N. High-Level Week
Climate Week NYC coincided with the U.N. General Assembly’s High-Level Week, and several other Princeton SPIA centers also held programming during that time.
The Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy & Finance (JRCPPF) and the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE) held a conference on sustainable investing. The panels and sessions featured eight Princeton alumni speakers discussing topics such as decarbonizing shipping, addressing the energy demands of AI data centers, and investing in climate-friendly initiatives in the Global South.
“The recurring theme across all the sessions was how financial markets and financial innovation can drive more investment to help realize the range of climate adaption and mitigation measures needed at local, regional, and global levels,” said Pallavi Nuka, associate director of JRCPPF.
Carolina G. Azevedo MPP ’25, a senior member of the U.N. Development Coordination Office, attended the Princeton SPIA conference and said it underscored how climate issues are about more than just the environment. Case in point: Devastating floods in Nepal that threaten to undermine the country’s development gains.
“Climate is increasingly a development, humanitarian, financing, security, food systems, and inequality issue all at once,” she said. “The challenge is not simply how much climate finance we mobilize. It is whether resilience finance reaches vulnerable countries and communities early enough to protect lives and development gains before catastrophe strikes.”
C-PREE also co-organized a reception with other leading universities to connect environmental policy researchers, and Princeton SPIA held a gathering for alumni to discuss the various issues raised throughout the busy week of global policy discussions. The events were a chance to step back and see the bigger picture.
“This is where I think Princeton SPIA brings something especially valuable: connecting climate, development, finance, policy, and implementation rather than treating these as separate problems,” Azevedo said.
Top photo: Attendees of the Institutional Food Systems Convening pause for a photo. Photo credit: Replate