We are all participants in one of the biggest and shocking scandals on earth. Almost 40 percent of food produced for human consumption, gets lost or wasted globally. In the Czech Republic, almost 730 000 tons of food are wasted each year.
According to the United Nations data, if the amount of food wasted around the world was reduced by just 25 percent, there would be enough to feed all the people who are malnourished.
Every year 1.3bn tons of food, about a third that is produced, is wasted, including about 45 percent of all fruit and vegetables, 35 percent of fish and seafood, 30 percent of cereals, 20 percent of dairy products and 20 percent of meat.
Meanwhile, nearly 800 million people suffer from severe hunger and malnutrition, many of whom will surely die. Well-publicised attempts to combat the loss of food – such as recent laws in France that legally mandate supermarkets to distribute unsold food to food bank charities – have highlighted the issue of food waste, identified by the UN as one of the great challenges to face the world.
Estimates suggest that by 2050 food production will need to be increased by 60 percent from 2005 to feed a growing global population. Reducing food wastage would ease the stress on valuable land and other finite resources as the world attempts to meet future demand.
The problem is international, but it manifests itself differently depending on where you are. In developing countries, there are high levels of what is defined as “food loss”, which is unintentional wastage, often due to poor harvesting equipment, inadequate storage, lack of refrigeration, transport and infrastructure weaknesses.
In the wealthier countries like ours, there are low levels of unintentional losses but high levels of “food waste”, which involves food being thrown away by consumers because they purchased too much, or by retailers who reject food because of aesthetic standards. In developed countries, consumers and retailers throw away around 40 percent of all food purchased, whereas in poorer countries less than 16 percent of food is thrown away. According to a recent report, in Europe and North America every individual wastes approximately 115 kilograms of otherwise edible food annually, whereas in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia the equivalent waste was not more than 11 kilograms.
Alarmingly, food waste is happening in countries where people can apparently afford to throw away food. One breathtaking statistic is that the amount of food wasted by consumers in industrialised countries is almost the same as the total net food production of sub-Saharan Africa of around 230m tons.
For us to discard perfectly edible food while poor people starve is deeply perplexing from a moral perspective. But the environmental impact of food loss and waste is quite devastating. The reality is that food waste is an important contributor to climate change.
The carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 gigatons of CO2, meaning that if food waste was a country it would rank as the third highest national emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. In fact, about 1.4bn hectares, or close to 30 percent of available agricultural land, is used to grow or farm food that is subsequently wasted. And more surface and groundwater, or “blue water”, is used to produce wasted food around the globe than is used for agriculture by any single country, including India and China.
Farming may look attractive, but it is one of the biggest production sectors in the world. With one-third produced in vain, it doesn’t take a genius to imagine what a huge impact this has on the natural resources, like on land conversation, water, energy and greenhouse gas emissions.
90 million tons of food is wasted in Europe each year – an average of 100 kilos per person. Tesco, one of Europe’s largest food retailers, has just revealed that the amount of food waste generated by the supermarket giant increased to 59,400 tons last year, which equates to nearly 119 million meals.
The company is the only one of the major supermarkets to publish its food waste data, and the increase came despite numerous initiatives designed to tackle the problem. The amount wasted is the equivalent of one in every 100 food products sold by Tesco during the last financial year.
With companies like Tesco together with a growing number of non-governmental organisations now tackling the problem both at the logistical and educational levels, this terrible tide of waste can turn in the Czech Republic.
There’s encouraging news from Britain where between 2007 and 2012, the amount of avoidable food waste produced by UK households decreased by 21 percent, largely due to greater awareness thanks to campaigns such as Wrap’s Love Food, Hate Waste. Tesco is beginning to take remedial steps in the Czech Republic and there are credible civil society organisations like Glopolis that are now seriously working on solutions.
There is now a clear opportunity for this country to take a lead in tackling the challenge of food waste. If we can get all the major food retailers to use their brainpower to find solutions, it is quite possible for the Czech Republic to become an exemplar for Europe and the world.
It’s time for everyone involved in the food chain, from farmers to processors to retailers and consumers to act decisively. Our planet has resource limitations. We are running out of land for agriculture. People are starving. There can be no doubt that the world is facing a major crisis. We simply cannot afford to go on wasting food.
By Jonathan Wootliff