Food waste – the easiest environmental problem
What is food waste ?
the extra bread that you didn’t eat this morning is going to be food waste. imagine 7 Billion people throw away just one peace of their extra bread this morning. how much bread is that going to be ? that’s just one simple example of how much food we waste.
food waste is not just the extra food that we throw away. it starts with the food that is being produced , but you are not going to buy
Where does it start ?
we use every potential of our planet to grow food. some times the food that our farmers grow do not have the look for sale , they become yellow , their leaves become ugly and etc , so they won’t even make it to the market. that’s the first part of food waste.
at the supermarkets , no one wants to buy the last broccoli that is being left on the shelf in reflect of that , supermarkets buy extra products just to show you it’s always full. the problem starts when the old products doesn’t look good anymore and they spoil the appearance and when they do , they become food waste again.
these are the parts of food waste that you don’t see .
How much food do we waste ?
Annually we waste 1.3 Billion tons of food. do you know how big this number is ? all the people who do not have access to suitable food and are starving to death are around 925 million . with this amount of food that we waste , we can feed 3 Billion people ,
3 times more than our world hunger !
it's not just the food ...
in the process of growing food farmers use tones of drinkable water. plants use this water to grow and produce and when we throw them in trash , we are basically wasting water too. in fact the amount of water that we are throwing away could be used by 9 Billion people each day , and every one could have 200 liters per person .
wasting food is also responsible for emitting 4.4 gigatons of green house gas emissions each year. to compare this number , if food waste were it’s own country it would be the third-largest green house gas emitter , surpassed only by China and the United States.
Why do we waste?
it’s simple , we buy more than we need , we do not care about our carbon footprint and pollution , we think it’s unlimited and it’s available for us at any time. wasting food became one of our routines . we don’t care if we throw away what’s being left on our plate. we even waste food to gain attention and more followers for our social media !
How not to waste?
1 : Buy responsibly
have you ever thought about what would happen if we bought enough food for each meal ? yes there would be no left over products which lose their look and become useless and eventually there wouldn’t be any food waste . buying responsibly has a great butterfly effect which often gets miss understood. when you buy less , less food will be produced from farmers , less water would be used , less driving for transferring this food to supermarkets and so on .
2 : Think about your food waste
having this mindset that we can end world hunger just by not throwing away the extra food on your plate will automatically make you care more about wasting food . remember there are 925 million people that don’t even have access to wasted food !
3 : Donate your extra food
yes ! it’s possible and it’s easy
Food pantries, food banks and food rescue programs are available everywhere to collect food and redistribute it to those in need.
start ups like copia and phenix can help you on the way .
you can become your neighborhoods’ food bank too ! each weekend when you have a gathering with your friends , collect the extra food from each house and redistribute it to those in need in the form of a team work. it’s fun and you are helping the community too !
4 : start growing your own food
it don’t matter if you have a big garden or not . you can always grow your food even in small spaces with just one container . growing herbs and micro greens have many wonderful effects both on you and your children. if you see how your food is being grown , you’ll enjoy your time taking care of it and it makes you appreciate the food more than before.
5 : spread awareness about food waste
spreading awareness about how our extra food can have a huge impact on the number of people who do not have access to any kind of food will help both our planet and our selves . remember if we want to have big changes in our world and our culture , we must start with our selves .
credits :
earth.org
bbc
stopwastingfoodmovement.org
the guardian
