How much food are we wasting?
415 million tonnes of food is wasted in agriculture globally, 600 million tonnes are wasted after harvest and up to the point of sale and 280 million tonnes are wasted at the consumption stage.
Australians discard up to 20% of the food they purchase which equates to 1 out of every 5 bags of groceries they buy. When you throw out food. You also waste the water, fuel and resources it took to get the food from the paddock to your plate. |
Picture from - www.shutterstock.com
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Why is it being wasted?
One of the reasons that we are wasting food is because we cook too much food that we don't eat. For example having a dinner but leaving two or three bowls for leftovers and let them stay in the fridge and go off because no one eats them. We are ordering takeaway instead of using the food that we have in the cupboards and waiting for it to go off. We tend to buy much more than we need because we don't check the fridge or freezer before we leave to go shopping and end up with 2 times what we need.
Picture from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste_in_New_Zealand
How it affects Australia, the World and the Environment?
When food rots with other organics it gives off a greenhouse gas called Methane which is 25 times more potent than the carbon pollution that comes out of your car exhaust. Sending food waste to landfill is the worst possible thing to do, creating an additional 536kg of GHG emissions. Where possible, redistribution to people (i.e. keeping the food from actually going to waste) is by far the best option.
Who could all this wasted food feed?
The average person eats 660.65kg of food in a year. Multiply that by how many people there are in the world and you get an average of 5 Billion tons of food consumed every year. With 795 million people not getting enough food in the world to live an active and healthy life and 280 million tons of food wasted at consumption stage every year, can we divide this wasted food between everyone? This calculation comes to a total of 319.51kg of food per person that is malnourished in the world. This is not enough food to sustain a healthy lifestyle, but, that was just the food wasted at consumption stage. 600 million tons of food is wasted after harvest at the stage of sale, if we add this to the amount wasted at consumption stage will it be enough to feed the hungry? This adds up to an astonishing 1004.17kg of food for every under fed person around the globe. This is much more food than any person needs to fulfill a healthy lifestyle, if we could manage to stop so much food being turned into waste and spread it around to people that need it.