Safe Guard
Phase - 1
Session - 1
“Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions will go hungry today as food is wasted across the world.”
-Inger Anderson, Executive director of UNEP
Everyday food could disappear without any plants, insects, birds and mammals will have nothing to eat. Entire food chain could die out. But wasted food is not just a social or humanitarian concern, it is an environmental one.
Reducing food waste is a big part of our climate strategy. A recent report from WWF has estimated that 2.5 billion tones food is wasted globally. That means 40% of the global food supply is never eaten. 1.2 billion tones food never makes it off the farms.
When we waste food, we waste the land, water and energy used to grow, harvest, transport and package it. It takes 4.4 million km of farm land to grow food which is wasted.
If the wasted food goes to the land fill and rots, it produces methane- a greenhouse gas even more potent than CO2. It produces 8%-10% of global GHG emissions.
For instance, In the US alone, the production of lost or wasted food generates more emissions than the entire airline industry.
While a third of humanity faces food insecurity, an equivalent of one billion tones meals go to waste every day, a new report by the UN environment agency revealed.
The UN environment food waste index report 2024 highlights that latest data from 2022 shows 1.05 billion tones food went to waste.
Some 19% of food available to consumers was lost overall at retail, food service and house hold levels. Most of the world’s food waste comes from households, totaling 631 million tones or up to 60% of the total food squandered.
The food service and retail sectors were responsible for 290 and 131 million tones accordingly. That is in addition to around 13%of food lost in the supply chain, as estimated by the UN food and agriculture organization from post-harvest up to the point of sale.
Around 8 343 700 000 tones food lost or wasted this year globally. On average, each person wastes 79Kg food annually. This is the equivalent of 1.3 meals every day for everyone in the world impacted by hunger.For instance, In the US alone, Americans waste 145 billion meals every year- making it challenging to sale imperfect produce, excess produce, feed hungry people and avoid the environmental impacts and improve postharvest handling.
Around a million people die every year of hunger-related diseases. This more than from AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis combined. Around 5 776 350 people died from hunger this year. A child dies from hunger every 10 second globally. 1 in 9 people go to bed hungry.Besides this, 822 million people suffer from undernourishment.
For instance, in 2017, over 20 million people in the African countries of Ethiopia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Kenya experienced acute food insecurity.
In my point of view, instead of wasting food, we can distribute them among hungry poor people. There are many families across the world living without food. Think about them and start feeding them whenever it is possible.
Leo Karishni Pulenthiran
