Now that we’re done with fast fashion, we’ll be moving on to another topic that many of us are guilty of, food wastage. Like any other problem stemming from consumerism, food wastage isn’t an issue that everyone faces. Food wastage and its associated forms of pollution are most felt in developed countries, where its citizens are fairly affluent.
What is food wastage
Well this term needs no explanation, but what most people are unaware of is that there are a few sources of food wastage. Food wastage is actually present from farm to fork, which means there’s already food wastage at the farms, where crops are harvested! In farms, deformed fruits and vegetables are not sold to consumers because they’re not desirable. On our dining tables, those leftover food are just thrown out at the end of the day. All these practices amount to a tremendous amount of food wastage!
How did it come about
Food wastage only became an issue when advances in agricultural technology enabled farmers to produce such vast amounts of food, driving food prices down. With the abundance of cheap food, frugality and thriftiness became less relevant. As a result, people began to overconsume (not literally, we mean economically) food by purchasing more and more. When we overbuy food and can’t finish all of it, it just goes into the dumpster. Such is a prime example of food wastage.
Implications
While food wastage impacts us in many ways, we’ll be leaning more towards how it affects our environment. Food waste will most likely end up in 2 places: incineration plants or landfills, where it contributes to air pollution and global warming. Suppose food waste is to be incinerated before disposal, such a process would release vast amounts of particulate matter, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Further adding to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is unnecessary, we don’t need global temperatures to rise even faster. Dumping this waste into landfills is even worse. In landfills, these organic matters are left to slowly decompose, producing methane! In case you didn’t know, methane is a potent greenhouse gas, it traps 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide!
These above-mentioned effects are only considering the end-stage of these food wastes, let’s not forget that wastage also occur throughout the life-cycle of food products. Have you considered the amount of water and energy needed to produce all these foods, only for them to end up in dumpsters!
In a nutshell
How we all know that food wastage is a huge problem in developed countries, producing a myriad of problems. However, all these facts may not be enough for us to grasp the sheer magnitude of the problem, so here’s something that’ll put things into perspective for us:
- Food waste makes up about half of the average 1.5kg of waste disposed of by each household in Singapore daily.
- In 2018, 763 000 000kg of food waste was generated in Singapore, equivalent to the weight of 54 000 double decker buses.
References
Tonini, D., Albizzati, P. and Astrup, T., 2018. Environmental impacts of food waste: Learnings and challenges from a case study on UK. Waste Management, 76, pp.744-766.
Towardszerowaste.gov.sg. 2020. Food Waste. [online] Available at: <https://www.towardszerowaste.gov.sg/foodwaste/> [Accessed 6 July 2020].
Stanford Earth. 2020. When Food Waste Becomes A Pollutant. [online] Available at: <https://earth.stanford.edu/news/when-food-waste-becomes-pollutant#gs.9jh8gu> [Accessed 6 July 2020].