Why does food waste matter?

When food is lost or wasted, it impacts environment, financial system and availability of sources at a time when many people can’t access sufficient meals to eat. Meals manufacturing processes release carbon dioxide into environment contributing to climate change. Meals waste has a financial impact, it influences food security, and it impacts climate and resource conservation. 

Food waste is a problem for food security affecting reliable access to enough, less expensive, secure and nutritious food. There are presently 820 million humans estimated to be hungry in world and our planet’s population is developing, so we want to produce more food more efficiently to have enough meals available. It is therefore important to prevent food loss and waste.

What is food waste?

Food waste is when food supposed for human consumption is not eaten. Instead it ends up either in landfill, is recycled, or used in energy recovery. A extra appropriate term to use would be ‘wasted food’. Some organizations refer separately to food loss in supply chain up till it reaches retailers and food waste, when edible food is unused by using retailers, distributors or consumers.

How can food waste be prevented?

Ideally, food waste should be prevented in first place: prevention. Unused food can be returned to meal supply chain. Unsold food can be redistributed to meals charities or repurposed as animal feed. If food waste cannot be prevented, then food need to be recycled to recover nutrients or generate biogas for energy. This can be executed by composting or anaerobic digestion.

How can I waste less food?

In the Pakistan, we waste 36 million tonnes of edible food that we purchase, but don’t eat. Purchasers are therefore a key part of the solution to stopping food wastage. This can be done in many ways: through meal planning, when shopping, at mealtimes and by way of make small portion at home, at restaurants, share large portions and by managing leftovers

Written by: Mafia Mahmood