Food waste is not only food waste

“Don’t waste food, do you know how many people do not have enough to eat?” It is very common to hear people saying things like this, but how many times have you heard something like “don’t waste your food, do you know how many people do not have access to water and energy?… Probably not once!

Food waste is a term that we have always used, but ignore its complete meaning. Around one third of the food produced in one year for human consumption gets lost or wasted, that is 1.3 billion tonnes. What we see is food, but blind to our eyes are all the other ingredients that may not be so obvious like water, energy and land. Just take a look at the following information provided by GRACE Communications Foundation in their report Food, Water and Energy: Know the Nexus

“To make a single pizza requires 333 gallons (1,260 liters) of water, enough to fill almost ten bathtubs!”

“Producing one calorie of food requires about one liter of water. That means you “eat” more water than you drink.”

“Approximately 2.5 percent of the U.S. energy budget is “thrown away” annually as food waste.”

“About 25 percent of all freshwater consumed annually in the U.S. is associated with discarded food; globally such waste consumes as much water as in Lake Erie.”

“If we wasted just 5 percent less food, it would be enough to feed four million Americans; 15 percent less waste could feed 25 million Americans annually.”

Food, water and energy are interrelated, the two latter are necesary to produce and transport everything we eat.

Water is used in crops irrigation, in industrial livestock farms, for energy generation, for cleaning and maintaining hygenic production, for cooling purposes e.g. to cool the steam to turn turbines in a nuclear power plant… and the list goes on and on.

Energy involves fuel production and electricity used for transportation, to operate machinery, produce fertilizers, move and pump water, and for processing and packaging food.

But also land is very important, since it is used to grow crops and as landfill. Agriculture leads to land degradation, and the regeneration process is slow and sometimes it is not even possible. Close to 30% of the fertile land is used to produce the food that ends up wasted, that is around 1.4 hectares of land.

And what about CO2 emissions? we not only emmit more by transporting the waste, the waste itself produces methane, which is one most harmful greenhouse gases. It is estimated that 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent come from the food that is produced but not eaten.

Food waste by itself is already a big issue considering that there are 842 million hungry people around the world. However, we need to add  the 780 million people that lack access to an improved water source, as well as the 1.3 billion people who lack access to electricity and the 2.6 billion people who use biomass for cooking, causing harmful indoor pollution.

Said in different words, 1 in 8 people go to bed hungry each night, 1 in 9 people do not have clean water for drinking and sanitation and 1 in 5 people still need electricity at home.

So food waste is not only food waste, it is misspending a variety of resources that are scarce, difficult to regenerate and not accesible for everybody. Next time you decide to throw away some food remember that it is not just about food. If you go to the supermarket buy the amount of food that you can eat before it gets rotten, or if you go to a restaurant only order the amount of food that you can actually eat. Try to measure your eating habits and modify your purchases according to them.

Comments Off on Food waste is not only food waste / 28 Feb 2014 por yvonneroca
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