Essay Edited

Food Waste

We waste food every day with or without knowing it, top of strawberries, brown bits of bananas, uneaten food from our school lunches and half-eaten nectarines. While making dinners we throw out the ends of spring onions, carrots, and leaves of lettuce. We all like to go to sleep on a full stomach, so we make more than we need and all the leftovers get thrown out.

In New Zealand, studies have shown that the average household throws away three shopping trolleys worth of edible food a year. That’s 157,398 tonnes (or $1.17 billion worth) of avoidable food going straight to landfill. There, it’ll decompose and release methane – a harmful greenhouse gas which by some measures is 25-30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. On a global scale, more than $1.2 trillion worth of food goes to landfill every year, contributing approximately 8% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

One in nine people do not have enough food to feed themselves that is 793 million people out of 7.8 billion people. Think about how lucky you are. There are small organizations all around the world trying to help decrease the ways we waste food. We need all the organizations to band together, share ideas and come up with an effective solution.

Almost half of all fruit and vegetables are wasted a year, which is 3.7 trillion apples. Wasting so many apples is unbelievable. Just imagine what 3.7 trillion apples would look like. If that is crazy, then think about this every time you throughout one burger it is the same as wasting as much water as a 90-minute shower wastes.

 As much as 40 percent of fresh produce is rejected by supermarkets due to it not reaching their quality standards, according to a new study. The report, by the UK’s Global Food Security Programme, reignites the debate over attitudes to so-called ‘ugly’ fruit and veg, claiming that issues over size, shape, and blemishes are causing perfectly edible produce to be rejected by retailers.

The report, Food Waste Within Global Food Systems, also claims that 15-20 percent of crops are lost during the production stage due to pests and diseases, though it stresses work is being done to reduce weather-related losses through better forecasting, so that waste from harvesting crops at the wrong time and from inefficient supermarket stocking can be minimized. Grading standards are also being redefined by marketing odd shapes and sizes of fruit and veg.

Eliminating global food waste would save 4.4 million tonnes of C02 entering our atmosphere and that is equivalent to taking one car in four cars of the road. It is amazing how you can do lots of small things to make a big difference in the world.

There’s a lot that needs to be done to tackle these issues: we need better housing, fewer cars, more efficient healthcare, and less reliance on fossil fuels. There’s no one-stop solution for fixing either problem, but one of the easiest ways to altruistically contribute to not just one but both these issues is to waste less food.

Overall my final opinion and statement is why can’t we just be better it’s all over the news.
It’s everywhere and no one will admit to how much we are wasting, pretending to be good people while people all around us are starving.