10 Alarming Facts You Need to Know About Food Waste

by Natasha Manual Digital Marketing Specialist

Celebrations are always special to us. Rather than just celebrating them, each of them underlines the importance of preserving and sustaining our resources, which we often fail to recognize. In light of recent catastrophes like Amazon fires, we need to think about celebrating special days by implementing positive environmental actions to safeguard our resources. Food waste - which represents ⅓ rd of the food produced in this world, is one of the important sectors where we need to take collective action as a need of the hour. On a global scale, actions to curb food waste has already begun. Let’s see some of the statistics that throws light into the issue and invite our immediate actions.

On the sidelines of the Milan Protocol, the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) hopes to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2020. According to Professor Ricardo Valentini of BCFN, the alarming climate variation will contribute significantly to the surge of global food prices within the range of by 2050, evoking a serious threat to the ecosystem. “Food waste has a negative impact on the environment, on the economy and on food security and nutrition”, affirms Ludovica Principato, a Ph.D. candidate in Management at the La Sapienza University of Rome and a BCFN Foundation researcher. We need to make a drastic intervention into the entire food chain from farmers to processing and distribution to prevent wastage.

Before food even reaches the end-user, heaps of food is being wasted because of improper handling. The quality of the food products is deteriorated due to the lack of proper infrastructure for storing food. Around 2 to 20 percent of fruits and vegetables are wasted in developed countries. When it comes to developing countries, the percentage steeps to a whopping 24 to 40 percent! Imagine how many communities could have thrived much better if there were quality mechanisms and processes present. Increased food wastage leads to exceeding prices which leads to less consumption of fruits and vegetables and has cascading effects on the global and regional economy.

In the retail segment, heaps of edible foods are being rejected in large parcels due to failure in meeting the mentioned standards and quality. According to a report published in 2011, around 20 percent of the food products produced in North America, Europe, Oceania, and Latin America are rejected for not meeting the grading requirements. However, some of the international markets are easing their food acceptance norms to avoid the excess of food waste. Now in the household sector, consumers in the high net worth countries discard up to 30 percent of fruit and vegetable purchases and trim the products up to 33 percent while preparing foods. Furthermore, the scope of recycling food is also narrow in the household.

The world has enough food to serve humanity, but the lack of clear cut strategies and regulations are contributing increasingly to food waste. Furthermore, here are some of the gasping facts about food waste and a much-needed realization of how irresponsibly are humans wasting food.

1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year globally
This amounts to US$1 trillion dollars of wasted or lost food
If wasted food was a country, it would be the third-largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world, after the United States and China
Just one-quarter of all wasted food could feed the 795 million undernourished people around the world who suffer from hunger
Food waste in rich countries (222 million tons) is approximately equivalent to all of the food produced in Sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons)
A European or North American consumer wastes almost 100 kilograms of food annually, which is more than his or her weight (70 kilograms)
A European or North American consumer wastes 15 times more food than a typical African consumer
Lack of technology and infrastructure is the main cause of food waste in Africa, as opposed to household food waste in the developed world
Food waste in Europe alone could feed 200 million hungry people
Food waste generates 3.3 billions tons of carbon dioxide, which accelerates global climate change

Reducing food waste brings a lot of benefits across various sectors of the economy. Considering the significant amount of food that we are irresponsibly wasting, imagine how much impact can we bring to this world in terms of financial, environmental and energy and resource conservation. And with the upswing of technology, curbing food waste and promoting sustainable eating can be more straightforward and valuable than it has been before.

What is FoodPulsar?

Food Pulsar is a purpose-built mobile application that promotes local sharing, selling and buying of food. This online food sharing app helps the local community to connect within and with the local retailers so that surplus food can be shared instead of disposing of. Meanwhile, it also acts as a food trading application where users can list their quality surplus food at a slashed price and sell them to the needy. Launched in India, this application is forged to combat the issue of food waste by providing a platform for the community to share and sell their surplus food at slashed prices. This app intends to think about food delivery a homely affair, where every individual can take part in the growth of the economy and play their role effectively in bringing a new sustainable food culture in the city.