By What does your food waste cost?
Three questions about your habits plus your weekly grocery spend give an honest dollar estimate.
- Grocery spend
- $15,600 per year
- Share wasted
- 12%
- Wasted per year
- $1,872
How we estimate
Waste is set on a sliding scale from 5 to 20 percent of your grocery spend, moving with each of the three habits, in line with the range official estimates describe. The scale is our editorial rule of thumb, not a measurement.
USDA puts food waste at 30 to 40 percent of the US food supply. EPA, Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers, April 2025, puts it at $728 per person per year.
The dinner comparison uses the roughly $10 per serving average we track. Your spend input stays on this page and is not stored.
Where do the percentages come from?
They are our editorial rule of thumb, not a measurement. Five percent of grocery spend for a household that plans, eats leftovers and checks the fridge before shopping, twenty percent for one that improvises, and a sliding scale between the two so every answer moves the figure. For scale, USDA puts food waste at 30 to 40 percent of the US food supply, and the EPA estimates the average consumer loses $728 a year.
Would a meal kit eliminate this cost?
No. Pre-portioned ingredients remove surplus from the recipes the box covers, which is the biggest single source, but waste from other meals, snacks and groceries bought alongside stays. How much a kit actually removes has never been measured independently.
Is my data stored?
No. The calculator runs entirely in the browser. Nothing is sent, saved or tracked.
Do meal kits cut waste? See the test
An estimate, not a bill. The figure shows the order of magnitude based on your answers.
How the estimate works
The model is deliberately simple and fully open. Your three habit answers place your household in one of three waste bands: 5 percent if you plan, keep leftovers, and shop from a list; 12 percent for average habits; 20 percent if dinners are improvised and leftovers usually lose. The band is multiplied by the weekly grocery spend you enter, and nothing else.
The bands are conservative next to the official numbers. USDA estimates 30 to 40 percent of the entire US food supply goes uneaten, and the EPA's April 2025 consumer study puts the average cost at $728 per person per year, about $56 a week for a family of four. If your result above feels high, the benchmarks say it is more likely low.