All over the world an absolutely staggering amount of food is wasted each year, 1.3 billion tons of it in fact.
To better comprehend just how much 1.3 billion tons of food is, here are some statistics.
- 1.3 billion tons of food could feed 3 billion people.[1]
- 1.3 billion tons equates to a third of all food produced. In other words, we are globally throwing out 33% of all food that we produce.[2]
- All that food waste is valued at 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) US dollars, 873,692,328,700 euros, 738,162,059,700 pounds, 816,741,731,500 Swiss Francs, or 7,864,218,760,500 Namibian dollars.[3],[4]
- Food waste consumes a quarter of the global water supply, 19% of fertilizers (which themselves are harmful to the environment), and uses up 28% of the world’s agricultural areas (equal to 1.4 billion hectares of land[5]).[6]
- Food waste accounts for about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.[7] Aviation emissions on the other hand are at 2%.[8]
- The water consumed by wasted food is enough to supply 8.5 billion people at 200 litres per person per day, enough for the entire human population with a bit left over.[9],[10]
As you can see, food waste is a huge problem and its impacts are severe. All that water wastage combined with the impacts of climate change is helping dry up areas worldwide and turning vast expanses of land into desert. Examples can be found in the expansion of the Sahara into the Sahel region and the expansion of the Gobi desert into the surrounding steppes. Already the Sahara Desert has expanded by 10% in size since 1920.[11]
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However, the loss of a quarter of the global water supply is not the only problem with food waste. 44% of all habitable land on earth has been turned to agriculture purposes and that has caused huge problems for the planet.[12] Just 23% of the entire world’s land surface can now be classified as wilderness excluding Antarctica. With this loss of natural habitat, the expansion of human agriculture has been the cause for 70% of the global loss in terrestrial biodiversity.[13]
However, the expansion of agriculture does not just negatively impact the natural world. It also causes severe problems for people worldwide as well. Land use change (the process by which human activities alter a natural landscape such as farming) has directly resulted in the fact that 3.2 billion people are adversely affected by land degradation.
As well as that, increased erosion rates caused by many agricultural activities has caused 33% of the world’s arable land to be lost in the past 40 years. This is because ploughed fields increase the erosion rate so much that it easily outpaces natural soil formation and after a while there is not much left.
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Now, this in no way means that farming should be stopped. People have to eat and the world population is growing. Also, no matter what happens, human agriculture is going to have some sort of negative impact on the environment.
That is simply how it works (for now at least). However, just because agriculture has a negative impact on the environment does not mean that its effects have to be greatly increased by the immense amount of food waste that goes on.
Out of all the food that is wasted, a large portion of it comes from households. In fact, households throw out 11% of the food directly available to them, which is equal to 74 kilograms or 163 pounds of food waste each year on average worldwide.
[14] Food waste at the consumer level is responsible for 42% of the food waste that goes on all over the planet. 30% of global food loss occurs at the agricultural production and harvest stage where crops can be damaged by pests and other diseases rendering them inedible; or they can be rejected by markets if they do not fit the right standards even though they are perfectly edible; and sometimes food can just be left on the ground as a result of overproduction, poor harvesting technology, or a lack of resources allowing all the food to be properly collected.[15] A further 18% of food waste on average worldwide is also lost at retail and during distribution.[16]
Image Credit: Toa Heftiba from Unsplash
After reading that paragraph, you have probably realized that not all food waste is avoidable for a variety of reasons. For example, sometimes pests eat the crops and sometimes there are diseases that make the produce unfit for consumption. However, this does not mean that most food waste cannot be avoided.
Quite the opposite in fact. In Global North countries, the majority of the food waste occurs at later stages in the supply chain, such as at the retail or consumer level, where it is much easier to avoid.[17]
In Canada, the average household produces 79 kilograms or 174 pounds of food waste per year. All in all, 58% of all food produced in Canada is eventually wasted in one way or another despite 60% of that food waste being easily avoidable through better planning or awareness.[18],[19] In the US, food waste is a bit lower at making up an estimated 30 to 40% of all food produced in the country.
[20] In the US, 43% of wasted food is generated in households, 40% is generated at the retail level which includes restaurants and grocery stores, 16% is generated at farms, and 2% is generated at manufacturers.[21] In the UK, 70% of all food waste occurs at households totaling at 6.6 million tonnes of food wasted annually. This percentage also matches the amount of food waste that is avoidable after it leaves the farms.[22]
So, the question is, what can be done to lower the amount of food that is wasted? One way is to not strictly rely on the best buy date of a food item. Many people throw out a food item based on if it is past its best buy date or not instead of whether it is no longer fit to eat.
In the end, simply be conscientious about whatever food you do waste. Of course, not all food waste can be prevented so for the remainder you can compost it, greatly reducing any methane emissions that would otherwise be created by the decomposition process in a landfill. In fact, composting will reduce food decomposition emissions by 78%.[23] Even so, simply reducing your food waste is one of the best and simplest ways to help the environment.
Image Credit: Wynan van Poortvliet from Unsplash
