Food Waste: We need to Stop Wasting 30% of our Food

Food losses occur on the farm, in storage, and in transit. This includes food that is damaged during processing, packaging and transport.

Food waste, meanwhile, occurs at the retail and consumer stages. Food is wasted when it is thrown out because it has reached its expiry date or is considered “ugly” by consumers. Food waste is also caused by poor storage in the home, and by ordering or buying more than you can eat.

Why are food loss and waste bad?

When food is lost or wasted, all of the resources required to make the food are wasted too! Globally, food loss and waste results in:

• 1.4 billion hectares of land being wasted to produce uneaten food - that’s a surface area larger than Canada and India put together!
• About 250 km³ of water being wasted a year - almost 3x the volume of Lake Geneva!

Food loss and waste also guzzle a lot of energy. This wasted energy results in significant greenhouse gas emissions. On top of this, rotting food contributes to emissions directly by releasing methane.

Overall, between 2010 and 2016, food loss and waste accounted for 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. In the US alone, the production of food that is lost or wasted releases the same amount of greenhouse gas as 37 million cars!

This is not only an environmental problem. All this waste comes at an economic cost too, of $940 billion USD a year! This results from economic losses throughout the supply chain, and increases the cost of food for consumers.

What causes food loss and waste in different countries?

The richer people are, the more food they waste. In wealthier countries, more than 40% of food loss and waste occurs at the retail and consumer stage. This is largely due to consumer behaviour and food supply exceeding demand.

In developing countries, food losses mostly occur earlier in the supply chain, with much less being wasted at the consumer level. While people in Europe and North America waste 95-115kg of food per person per year, people in sub-Saharan Africa and South/South-East Asia waste only 6-11kg per person per year.

Food losses in developing countries are caused largely by poor harvesting techniques, insufficient storage and cooling facilities, and a lack of infrastructure for food transport and marketing.

How can we reduce food loss and waste?

While energy is required to process and package food, the emissions that result from food loss and waste are much greater. Take beef as an example: packaging, transport and retail together contribute just 1-9% of total emissions, while food loss and waste cause 12-15%.

In developing countries, investments in improved harvesting techniques, storage facilities, and infrastructure will be needed to reduce losses, as well as improvements in processing and packaging facilities.

Storage is one of the biggest causes of food loss in these countries, so improving storage facilities would have a big impact on reducing losses. For example, if access to refrigeration was the same as in richer nations, 25% of food loss and waste from these countries could be eliminated!

To solve this problem, we will need to develop low-cost, off-grid solutions for food preservation. One example of such a technology is the Wakati, an air-tight tent that requires only solar power and water to create a sealed storage environment that slows ripening and prevents food from dehydrating and growing mould.

In fact, low-cost, low-emission technologies to prevent food loss and waste are useful in richer countries too. For example, edible coatings that prevent food losing water and products that absorb the ripening gases given off by fruit and vegetables keep food fresher for longer.

More high-tech solutions are also on the horizon. Smart packaging is being developed that is able to monitor food and give real-time indications of how close it is to going off. Some smart packaging even actively prevents the growth of food-spoiling microbes altogether!

But innovation alone can only get us so far. The public also needs to become more aware of how their actions increase food waste, and what they can do to stop it.

As well as encouraging less wasteful practices, people need to be better informed about food storage and safety beyond expiration dates (which varies in different countries).

But it’s not just consumers who waste food. Supermarkets set high standards for what food should look like, and imperfect food is often thrown away even if it is perfectly edible. Embracing “ugly” foods at both the retail and consumer level will be essential for us to reduce unnecessary food waste.

Restaurants, retailers, and caterers can also reduce food waste by selling food in appropriate portions and donating uneaten goods to those who are unable to afford to buy them.

What about the bits of food we can’t eat? Food scraps can be fed directly to animals or fed to insects (like black soldier fly larvae) which can in turn be used as animal feed. But these food scraps can also be used by humans. For example, food waste can be turned into biodegradable packaging and bioplastics. This not only reduces waste, but it also reduces the amount of non-biodegradable plastic packaging that gets thrown away.

Conclusion

Food loss and waste occur at all stages of the food supply chain, and represent a huge waste of resources and unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing food loss and waste will benefit both the environment and the global economy, improving global food security and making food more available to poorer communities whilst saving billions of dollars.

Different solutions will be required for different countries, as the causes of food loss and waste vary considerably in different regions. As the world gets richer, consumer-level food waste is likely to become more and more of a problem. Therefore, it is vital that people are aware of the impacts of food waste and what they can do to make a difference.

Even so, some food loss and waste is unavoidable, especially losses that occur earlier in the supply chain. What if we could shorten the chain?

In the next chapter we will look at how this could be achieved, by bringing food production closer to consumers.

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