GRANT GERLOCK: There's a problem with America's food system.

It's not how much food we make.

It's how much we end up throwing away.

Pound for pound, more food goes into landfills

across the country than any other single source of waste.

The more food we throw away,

the bigger the problem becomes.

GAIL TAVILL: When you put food in a landfill

it creates methane gas, which is massively more potent

than carbon dioxide in terms of

climate change and greenhouse gases.

GERLOCK: But more people are realizing -

all that food waste could be a valuable resource.

KARIN PAGE: I mean, every farmer I work with is so generous,

and they would rather have their food feed people

than even feed the chickens or compost it.

JACOB HICKEY: If we can just pull that stuff from

our industrial sites and our grocery stores

and also our school cafeterias

then we can pull that out of the landfill.

GERLOCK: They're writing a recipe for change,

so the food that's being thrown out doesn't all go to waste.

DAN NICKEY: People are getting on board.

People are wanting to know where their food comes from.

At the same point they saying, okay, where does it go.

♪ MUSIC ♪

GRANT GERLOCK: There's more food available in the U.S.

than ever before.

But we're also throwing more food away.

The amount of food Americans waste

has been on the rise for decades and that has serious

economic and environmental consequences.

We begin our food waste story at the end of the line

- the landfill.

GERLOCK: You put it on the curb.

It goes away.

Never to be seen again.

Of course it all goes somewhere.

The good thing?

It's taken away and you don't have to think about it,

or smell it, again.

The bad thing?

If you don't have to think about it,

you probably don't.

But once you start digging into it, you find out -

what you throw away and where it goes,

does make a difference.

There are those who do have your garbage on their minds.

Jack Chappelle is one of them.

He sorts garbage.

States and cities hire Chappelle's consulting company

to look through their trash and tell them what it's made of.

JACK CHAPPELLE: You want to know how long the landfill can last,

what materials you can get out of it,

what materials you can take out of the waste stream

that makes the landfill last even longer.

GERLOCK: Chappelle finds that a lot

of what we throw away doesn't have to be.

It could be recycled.

Nationwide more than 8 million tons of glass

goes in the landfill.

24 million tons of cardboard and paper.

CHAPPELLE: You still find an awful lot of bank statements

and checks people tear up.

Uh, tin cans.

GERLOCK: Then there's food.

CHAPPELLE: In the country you get more peelings,

you get more vegetables.

When you're in the city

you get a lot more fast food containers

with half eaten food in them.

A lot more pizza boxes

GERLOCK: The Environmental Protection Agency

estimates that, Nationally, about 20 percent

of what goes into the landfill each year is food.

Add all the food together from L.A. to New York

and America throws away nearly 35 million tons each year.

35 million tons.

That's almost 100 Empire State buildings, made of food.

Enough food goes uneaten in the United States in one day

to feed the Denver metro area for 10 weeks.

More than 2 million people could eat

from New Year's to St. Patrick's Day.

DAN NICKEY: We just have so much of an abundance of food

that we don't realize the value of it.

GERLOCK: Dan Nickey from the Iowa Waste Reduction Center

works with businesses to cut back on

what they throw away, including food.

Nickey says waste happens at every level of the food chain.

NICKEY: You have food that is in warehouses that expires

and they throw it way.

Maybe they made a mistake

and it doesn't have the flavoring they want.

They don't want to sell it, so they throw it away.

I think it's part of the culture today

that compared to when our parents grew up.

Now we don't look at food as a resource,

we look at it as a given.

GERLOCK: From farmers to consumers, fruits and vegetables

make up a third of the food loss in the U.S.

Dairy products cover another 20 percent

of what goes uneaten.

When you look at the amount of food going unused,

the costs add up environmentally and financially.

First let's look at the money.

NICKEY: 40 percent of all the food in this country,

never makes it to the table.

At a cost of 165 billion dollars.

GERLOCK: And that's just in the U.S.

Globally, food losses add up to 750 billion dollars.

Behind those dollar signs is a significant

environmental threat when food is buried in a landfill.

NICKEY: You're going to have generation of methane gas.

Methane gas is a greenhouse gas which

is a contributor to global warming.

GERLOCK: As a greenhouse gas, methane is 20-25 times stronger

than just carbon dioxide.

One thing landfills are able to do is capture the methane

before it escapes into the atmosphere.

It's happening at hundreds of landfills across the country.

The landfill in Lincoln, Nebraska started

collecting methane gas in 2013 and sending it here

to a generating station where the gas

is now burned to make energy.

TOM DAVLIN: That pipe comes from the landfill.

The landfill is located about a mile and a half west of us.

After gas is processed and cleaned then we compress it,

we send it through the pipeline underground

into the building and then into the engines.

The average home uses 1000kwh per month.

So in an hour we can supply enough energy

to supply 3200 typical Nebraska homes.

GERLOCK: 32 hundred homes powered by gas

from food and other organic waste.

For Dan Nickey, that kind of system may be a good

backup for food that's already underground,

but it's not the solution to the problem because food

is still taking up valuable landfill space.

And, he says, there are better things to

do with the food we don't eat.

NICKEY: We need to stop thinking of it as a waste.

Even though it's maybe not used for its intended purpose,

it still is not a waste because it still has value.

It's only a waste if we put it in a landfill.

GERLOCK: And that is the last place he says it should go.

GERLOCK: Why does so much food go to waste?

One reason might be that it's so affordable

it's considered disposable.

Americans spend about 10 percent of their incomes on food.

That's the smallest percentage

of any country in the world.

But it's not that way for everyone.

49 million Americans sometimes have trouble

putting food on the table.

Much of what is currently being wasted

could be used to feed families.

Randy Mason introduces us to some people hungry

to help make that happen.

KARIN PAGE: "Spread out all the way to the end and

people can have their own little patch."

RANDY MASON: On a mild Saturday morning in June,

a team of volunteers arrives at this small farm

in Kansas City, Kansas, ready to glean.

That is, gather the unharvested lettuce and

other crops that might otherwise never be picked

and waste away in the fields.

PAGE: "If you fill your bags to the top,

but you can tie it shut, that's three pounds.

So this is like three pounds right here!"

MASON: Another day, it could be a cornfield near Baldwin City.

Bill Conaway: Gleaning is biblical.

Thousands of years old, so we're getting back

to some of the basics.

MASON: Or maybe a patch of beets and greens

in Platte City, Missouri.

PAGE: When we're gleaning,

they'll say you can have this row here,

and we take everything,

and it's after they're done selling that crop.

So it could be that the mustard is close to bolting

or has already bolted.

I mean, every farmer I work with is so generous,

and they would rather have their food feed people

than even the chickens or compost it.

LINDA OUSLEY: We started with a non-profit

called the society of St. Andrews.

I actually opened that office in 2008.

And over the next six years we salvaged more

than 15 million pounds of food to feed people,

fifteen million pounds!

MASON: Though Ousley might on occasion, secure a

donation of potatoes or some other crop by the semi-load,

the bulk of what they collect still

comes the old fashioned way,

one fruit or vegetable at a time.

Food that's been left behind,

largely because of aesthetics.

CLAY JARRETT: We've been to farms where they have

squash this big, but that's too big

to go on grocery store shelves

so you pick everything that's ugly or blemished,

but still great edible food.

(Water being sprayed on vegetables)

PAGE: I don't care what it is, whether it's a

strawberry or a beet or mustard right out of the ground.

It's so good.

(Crunching)

MASON: And nutritionally good for the most

food insecure portion of our population as well.

PAGE: When people do food drives,

they're getting cans and boxes,

they're not getting fresh produce.

And everybody loves fresh produce.

To me it just completes the whole fun cycle of this.

♪ Violin playing ♪

MASON: Even crops that make it out of the field

don't all make it to consumers.

Farmers markets like this one on the square in

Fayetteville, Arkansas, showcase lots of great

locally grown produce, but by Saturday night,

much of what hasn't been sold may well be tossed out,

a troubling thought when you consider

1 in 7 Americans may be underfed.

Don Bennett's Tri-cycle farm is one of

several grassroots groups in Fayetteville,

determined to take an active role in dumpster diversion.

DON BENNETT: We do our part in our neighborhood

and distribute close to about 3-4 hundred pounds

of food each Sunday.

MASON: And at the University of Arkansas,

another aspect of food waste is being addressed -

leftovers from restaurants and cafeterias.

It is in a sense another kind of gleaning program.

Five days a week, a student group called

"Razorback Recovery" is saving salads, sandwiches,

and baked goods from dining halls, retail sites,

and events on campus and taking them to

Fayetteville food pantries.

CLAIRE ALLISON: The food's already there,

it's already made it to the right standards

and kept at the appropriate temperature.

And so instead of it being pitched into the dumpster,

they just put it in our fridge

and we take it out to the agencies who need it.

MASON: The school's food service provider had some

serious concerns about liability--What if their

leftovers were mishandled and someone became ill?

Nicole Civita, a faculty member at the university's

food law program, says that is a common concern,

but one that was largely laid to rest