Can you believe that 1.3 billion tons of food, about a third of all food produced, is wasted globally every year? Lost. Wasted. Uneaten. Thrown away. And with it all the energy and water used to produce, store and transport this food.
Think about it. Global annual food waste is equivalent to junking 7.2 million blue whales or 100,000 Taj Mahal's worth of food every year. The CO2 emissions produced in growing this food is 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent/year (in 2007 numbers). This makes "Food wastage", if viewed as a country, the third largest emitter after China and the US, and more than India's total CO2 equivalent emissions for a whole year. The blue water (or water drawn from lakes, ponds and groundwater) used in producing this wasted food is 250 cubic km of water each year - about 3.6 times the entire US's blue water consumption. In a water-scarce world, that's criminal.
Also consider another angle: while we as a world, waste so much food, more than 800 million of us don't have enough food to lead a healthy life. There is a philosophical difference between emitting CO2 or using water to grow economies or build infrastructure and emitting to waste. The latter is unjustifiable on every level.
So why do we do it?
Each country is a little different: poorer countries like India have food loss (as opposed to food waste) that occurs in the post-harvest, processing and transport of food, driven by the lack of infrastructure for efficient storage, processing and transport. Richer countries (and richer people in poorer countries) have food waste in downstream segments - driven by poor retail practises (both supermarkets and restaurants) and careless consumption.
Let us look at the consumption end of the spectrum a little more closely.
Food occupies a small portion of the wallet for consumers in developed markets - hence they buy more than they need. American families are estimated to throw away about a quarter of the food and beverages they buy. They consume more too. Dinner plate sizes have increased 36% from 1960 to 2007. Portion sizes in restaurants have increased as well leading to more food added to ever-increasing waistlines or every-growing landfills.
Supermarkets add to the problem - anything deemed (sometimes arbitrarily) less than perfect is discarded, even though it could be perfectly edible. Grocers store more than required - believing that customers buy more from plentiful shelves. In a global supply chain, many fruits and vegetables travel thousands of kilometres to supermarket aisles, only to be thrown away.
Food waste contributes in another way to climate change. All that waste has to be transported from homes and businesses to landfills. Rotting food makes landfills potent sources of methane, a greenhouse gas. Indeed methane emissions from landfills make up almost a fifth of annual US emissions of methane.
What can we do?
The solutions depend on the situation.
France has recently passed a law that requires supermarkets to sign contracts with charities to dispose of edible food waste and prevents them from deliberately spoiling (by adding bleach for instance) edible food that had been thrown away. This is in addition to a proposed education campaign on food waste for schools and businesses.
In countries like India - growing, hungry and water-starved - the crying need of the hour is better investment in infrastructure so that less food is lost before it hits retail shelves. Indians, on average, are better at not wasting food once they buy it - about 8 kg per capita per year vs. ~ 100 kg per year wasted in the US or Europe. But an average figure conceals all manner of sins. The urban affluent Indian customer is mimicking his western counterpart - buying, eating and wasting more food than she needs. Thus the western problems of increased waste in landfills and obesity are being replicated here. Again the solutions are simple and actually save money - buy what you need, segregate waste, and compost food waste. However, before this becomes an ingrained habit, we need effective campaigns to promote this habit. Awareness is key here. Bangalore has a thriving waste management system - there are companies and NGOs, often working together, to manage waste. Many segregate waste at the customer site and then collect it so that instead of 90% of all waste going into the landfill, less than 10% does. Composting, while gaining popularity, still has not taken off in a big way.
We need to make wasting food an unattractive proposition - both morally and economically. Today, for those of us who waste food, buying food and throwing it away is too cheap . And the planet is paying the price.
(Climaction is a fortnightly column that is published in MetroPlus Weekend on alternate Fridays. The next article in this series will appear on June 12.)
Feedback and questions may be e-mailed to climaction2015@gmail.com
Mridula Ramesh is the Executive Director of Sundaram Textiles. She is also a student and teacher of global warming.
