The Bigger Costs of Wasting Food
After seeing how costly it is to produce food and how many people lack access to it, wasting food sounds absurd. Yet, one third of the food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted.
While in low-income countries most food is wasted during the production, handling and storage of products, most food is trashed at the consumer level in medium to rich countries. Richer countries also waste significantly more: North America and Europe waste 10 times more food than Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (FAO 2011).
Food can be lost at many stages along the food supply chain. For instance, crops can be damaged through poor harvesting techniques, poor infrastructure like refrigeration, inappropriate storage, “ugly” produce are discarded as unsellable, and poor meal preparation leads to waste at home.
Produce considered ugly and unsellable.
Losing about 1.3 billion tons of food a year clearly has consequences. First must be considered the resources wasted from producing this food that is never eaten. It takes up 1/3 of the agricultural land area to grow it, with its impacts on biodiversity, emissions, soil erosion etc. Food waste takes up 1/4 of the fertilizer used in agriculture, unnecessarily polluting soils and water.
If it were a country, food waste would rank third in emissions after USA and China, including the emissions from producing and supplying wasted food and those released by decomposing food in landfills. Moreover, its consumption of surface freshwater and groundwater (blue water footprint) is about 1/4 of that of agriculture, and hence about 18% of the global freshwater consumption.
Last, not eaten food costs about $1 trillion to produce and supply, and if we add the economic costs of its environmental (e.g. emissions, water scarcity) and social (e.g. risk of conflicts due to soil erosion) impacts, it adds up to at least $2.6 trillion!
And if all these numbers don't bother you yet: re-distributing half of the food that is wasted would end hunger worldwide.
The consequences of an inefficient food supply chain, social restrictions and a modern throwaway lifestyle have lead to a huge but silent issue that must be solved promptly.
Diego Garcia-Vega - December 30th 2017
If it were a country, food waste would rank third in emissions after USA and China, including the emissions from producing and supplying wasted food and those released by decomposing food in landfills. Moreover, its consumption of surface freshwater and groundwater (blue water footprint) is about 1/4 of that of agriculture, and hence about 18% of the global freshwater consumption.
Last, not eaten food costs about $1 trillion to produce and supply, and if we add the economic costs of its environmental (e.g. emissions, water scarcity) and social (e.g. risk of conflicts due to soil erosion) impacts, it adds up to at least $2.6 trillion!
And if all these numbers don't bother you yet: re-distributing half of the food that is wasted would end hunger worldwide.
The consequences of an inefficient food supply chain, social restrictions and a modern throwaway lifestyle have lead to a huge but silent issue that must be solved promptly.
Diego Garcia-Vega - December 30th 2017