Food Waste and Climate Change By Nick

You might not think it but in the recent years, food waste has become one of the major factors for climate change as they are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

1/3 of food we buy is wasted

When you think that one-third of all food produced for human consumption in the world is lost or wasted, that’s a lot.

Also Supermarkets lose 90,000 tons of fruit and vegetables annually  just because of the way they look.

Wonky fruit and veg thrown out just because of the look

 

While restaurants throw out around 10 percent of the food they purchase, contributing to 1/5 of all food that ends up in landfills. That is a pretty scary statistic.

So if you eat all the food on your plate you’re not only making it easier for the person washing the dishes, you’re saving the environment.

Less of these

And more of these

Another way of looking at it is thinking about all the people in developing countries that would love to have a meal.

One thing you could do to stop wasting food is use it to feed animals. One thing I saw was that oats make up 1% of food wastage and instead they could be fed to pigs that would enjoy them. 

There are organisations that donate excess food to thousands of food banks across the country. In the past 10 years one organisation has donated more than 62 million pounds of edible food to communities in need. That is certainty better than leaving it to cause more climate change. And lets be honest, I think fossil fuel burning power plants are already causing enough problems without food waste.