Food Wastage

If food wastage was a country, it would be the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions!

Food waste burdens waste management systems, increases food insecurity, and plays a major role in global problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
According to the United Nations, about 931 million tons of food are wasted annually, accounting for between 8 and 10 percent of global carbon emissions.
According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 2021, about 17 percent of global food production may be wasted, with 61 percent of this waste coming from households, 26% of food services and 13% of retail stores are provided.
Therefore, reducing food waste at all levels – consumer and household – can have significant environmental, social and economic benefits. This ambition is enshrined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3, which commits countries to halve global food waste per capita at the retail and consumer level by 2030.

The problem of food waste is worse than previously thought!

The Food Waste Index is the first of its kind to highlight the scale of the problem. However, the report found that per capita household food waste is similar in high-income, middle-income and middle-income countries. There was not enough information about low-income people.

This suggests that global food waste could be more than double previous estimates. Previous studies have shown that food waste at consumption is a problem exclusively in developed countries, with production, storage, and transportation losses thought to be particular issues in developing countries.

Motivate the evolution of the food system

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that 690 million people were hungry in 2019, a figure that is likely to increase after Quidditch.
As food insecurity affects many people around the world, it is estimated that food loss costs the global economy $ 936 billion annually.
Food systems as a whole have $ 12 trillion in health, economic and environmental costs to society, which is 20 percent more than the market value of food systems.
This report describes how to motivate changes in food systems, such as investment refocusing and public policies.
Redesigning business models, forcing investors to set higher standards for companies, and encouraging consumers to shift demand for more socially responsible products are some of the things that can be mentioned.

How to deal with the problem of food waste?

At the government level, the Food Waste Index encourages countries to use their approach to measuring food waste – at the household, food service and retail level – to guide national strategies for food waste prevention and track progress towards 2030 goals.
Food-related businesses, such as supermarkets, can do their part to reduce waste by maintaining product quality and safety and using the least amount of energy possible.

For example, smart packaging technology can be used to monitor warehouse temperatures and storage levels for food manufacturers, improve systems to control product storage conditions during transportation and sales, and monitor the health status of food products in real-time, from production to consumption.

But there are many things that can be done at the consumer or household level. The FAO suggested ways to waste less food, such as adopting a healthier diet, purchasing essentials, and wisely storing food.

The difference between “use to spoilage” and “best time to eat” is also helpful in understanding food labeling

“Use until spoiled” tells you how long food is safe to eat, while “best time to eat” indicates that food quality is best before that date, although it is still safe after that.
People are also encouraged to eat smaller portions and like leftovers. So whatever is left over can be frozen later or added as an ingredient in another meal.
Food waste can also be composted, returning nutrients to the soil and reducing your carbon footprint.
Buying local produce enables consumers to help fight pollution by reducing delivery times, while eating at least one non-meat meal a week can also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Out of every six cups of milk, one cup is thrown away every year!

According to research conducted at the University of Edinburgh for the Guardian (2018), one in six pints of milk produced worldwide is lost or wasted, a significant contributor to food waste.
According to Professor Peter Alexander, a fellow of the newly formed Academy of Global Agriculture and Food Security, 16% of dairy products – 116 million tonnes – are lost or wasted globally every year. He calculated that retailers, distributors, and consumers are responsible for half of this waste, throwing away around 60 million tonnes of dairy every year.
Around 55 million tonnes are lost before they even reach the shops – during production and distribution – due to spoilage and waste on the farm or while the milk is being distributed and exported abroad.

However, some analysts believe that dairy waste figures could reach 30 percent if more inefficiencies are taken into account, such as flooding of foreign markets, use of milk as animal feed and over-consumption.

Alexander said: “To achieve a more efficient system and reduce the environmental impact of food waste, we need to consider ways to reduce all these sources of loss.” In many developing countries, the percentage of milk lost from farm to warehouse is much higher than in economically developed countries, due to problems in storing and transporting the product.

For example, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 15 percent of Oman’s milk is lost on the farm, compared to 0 percent in Sweden.

In more developed countries, such as the United Kingdom, milk and dairy products are discarded at the retail and consumer level. Dairy is one-fifth of all food waste in the UK, according to Wrap, the UK government’s waste reduction agency.
However, according to the USDA, dairy production has been growing rapidly around the world, growing by 6% between 2014 and 2018. China, India, Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland saw the largest increases in production.