When David Alvarez worked at a Walmart in Tampa, Florida, he regularly chucked unsold tomatoes, potatoes and bananas into compost bins behind the store. Meanwhile, the food on his own table was much less fulfilling sandwiches, ramen noodles, milk. It was all he could afford, he said.

Alvarez felt like he was starving to death, he told The Huffington Post. Id been on food stamps the whole time Id been out there at Walmart, because you just cannot make it on what they pay.

For most of his time as a produce associate, Alvarez, 56, made $9.15 an hour about a buck more than the Florida minimum wage , but not enough to eat well, he noted. Alvarez was fired in March, he said, for speaking at a rally in support of a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Kevin Gardner, a Walmart spokesperson, told HuffPost that Alvarez was laid off for violating company policies, though he declined to specify which ones.

But Alvarezs time working for Walmart revealed a disappointing truth: Stores regularly toss food that is better than what many of their employees can afford. And while Walmart donates a lot of unsold food to charity, company policy bars employees from taking unsold food home, Gardner said.

Alvarezs story is startlingly common. One in seven American households dont have steady access to healthy meals, yet roughly 40 percent of all the food in the U.S. goes uneaten. Some of this food is composted or turned into animal feed, but most of it winds up in landfills, according to an analysis from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The causes of food waste are varied, ranging from inefficient supply chains to confusing food labels to widespread contempt for foods that arent aesthetically perfect. But experts say the problem is clear: The food system as it exists today is deeply flawed.

Lots of people and businesses are coming up with clever ways to conserve, reuse and redistribute uneaten food, and Walmart actually is considered a success story on this front. In its most recent fiscal year, the company donated 611 million pounds of food to food pantries. Since 2009, it has turned more than 25,000 tractor-trailers worth of food into compost, animal feed and biofuel, according to Gardner. Its Tampa stores did not send any food to landfills in 2015.

However, the company generally does not stock imperfect fruits and vegetables on its shelves in the United States, a policy experts say causes a tremendous amount of food to go to waste and should be changed. (Walmart recently launched an experimental effort to sell odd-looking russet potatoes at some stores in the U.S., though Activists want to see the retail giant, which is also the countrys largest supermarket, ramp up its effort.)

Furthermore, Alvarezs experience highlights what anti-waste advocates say is an urgent need for better, longer-lasting solutions to the twin problems of hunger and food waste problems that inspired HuffPost to launch an editorial campaign targeting waste.

For the next few months, our reporters and editors will probe the challenges and potential solutions to the countrys waste problem, an issue that has devastating social and environmental consequences, yet is often undercovered in the media. Were calling it the Reclaim campaign. The initial part of the effort focuses on food, though well also be covering other types of waste such as packaging and electronics waste.