US Food Waste Pact’s 2025 Impact Report shows decrease in food waste

The amount of food wasted nationwide by grocery retail and food service companies decreased in 2024 compared to 2023, according to a new report from the U.S. Food Waste Pact, a collaborative of 30 food businesses across the country led by Chicago-based ReFED and Washington-based World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Although the pact’s 2025 Impact Report measured an increase of 77,800 tons of unsold food at grocery stores from 2023 to 2024, representing a loss of $26.9 billion, the unsold food rate, a metric used to reflect waste reduction in the retail sector, decreased by 1.1 percent in the same period. This means that while market fluctuations and business performance across the retail sector resulted in more food passing through grocery stores, food waste still decreased based on the share of retail inventory that went unsold, the pact says.

The food efficiency rate, the metric used to reflect waste reduction in the food service sector, decreased by 5.7 percent from 2023 to 2024, which was accompanied by a 4,000-ton reduction in waste and a $15.9 million decrease in the wholesale cost of surplus food.

This is the second year the pact’s signatories have reported data, with the 2023 results serving as the inaugural benchmark for food waste in these sectors.

“Being able to measure these kinds of trends is a core reason for why we launched the U.S. Food Waste Pact over two years ago,” says Jackie Suggitt, vice president of business initiatives and community engagement at ReFED. “Measuring food waste is critical to making progress to reduce it. This kind of data allows our signatories and food businesses across the country to take informed and targeted action against food waste.”

In addition to these downward trends in retail and food service, the report shares that the pact’s food waste reduction pilot projects have demonstrated food waste reduction averaging more than 50 percent.  Across four pilots, frontline workers have generated more than 750 food waste reduction ideas and implemented more than ten ideas, resulting in an average food waste reduction of 66 percent, the pact says.

One whole chain pilot from 2025 tested a solution to reduce strawberry waste and diverted approximately 10,000 pounds of strawberries, reducing on-farm strawberry waste by 51 percent.

The pact’s first low-waste events pilot implemented measurement practices and tested several solutions to back-of-house waste, reducing 55 percent of food waste in key food categories, including bread, fruit and dressings and sauces, across participating sites.

“Our pilots show impressive proof of concept that, if brought to scale, could have staggering impacts on food waste,” says Pete Pearson, vice president of food loss and waste at WWF. “It points to the need for more collaboration across the supply chain to leverage simple solutions with high returns.”

According to the report, composting is the most common destination for food waste diverted from landfills. The report explains that destination pathways are often determined by client-owned infrastructure, and composting has been the focus for many. In 2024, composting made up 58.19 percent of the food service destination rate, followed by landfilling at 35.95 percent.

An additional 14 food businesses and organizations joined the pact in 2025, nearly doubling the initiative’s signatory base. The pact says these signatories have expanded its work across the supply chain, allowing for more collaboration to accelerate impact.

“This was a landmark year for the U.S. Food Waste Pact,” ReFED President Dana Gunders says. “Our signatories are deeply invested in learning from each other, and the impact of that shared knowledge shows. Whether on a micro scale through pilots or on a macro scale through their own business initiatives, they are taking data-informed action to reduce food waste, and their collaboration is accelerating progress on that shared goal. We’re excited to deepen our engagement with signatories this year as we focus on expanding our resources and scaling solution adoption.”