Stop Food Waste Day

Bruised apples. Jasmin Sessler / Pixabay.com / 2017 / CC0 1.0

The 28th of April is Stop Food Waste Day.

An estimated one-third of all the food produced in the world is lost or wasted. ^[1]”In 2011, FAO presented the estimate that around ⅓ of the world’s food was lost or wasted every year.” Food Loss and Food Waste. UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Accessed May 2021 at http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/flw-data)

Reducing this food waste will help both the environment and the economy:

“Less food loss and waste would lead to more efficient land use and better water resource management with positive impacts on climate change and livelihoods.” ^[2]Food Loss and Food Waste. UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Accessed May 2021 at http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/flw-data)

#StopFoodWasteDay

Website: https://www.stopfoodwasteday.com/en/index.html

Types of food waste

Food waste is now being divided in two categories, for better understanding and management of the problem:

• Food Loss: from after harvest up to but not including the retail stage — so, processing, manufacturing, shipping;
• Food Waste: waste that occurs in hands of retailers and consumers.

Note that food loss doesn’t include non-edible parts of produce that were not intended to be food. ^[3]FAO. 2011. Global food losses and food waste – Extent, causes and prevention. Rome

Consumer waste

• we buy too much;
• we use recipes that make too many portions that don’t get used or can’t be frozen;
• we forget about food or don’t get around to using it while it’s still good and it goes bad;
• bread is a prime candidate for waste — cooking with stale bread is an art that has been lost! ^[4]”One of the biggest food waste culprits in the UK is the humble loaf of bread, where 44% of bread is wasted each year!” — Elphick, Laura. How to reduce your food waste footprint. EIT Food. 4 March 2021. Accessed April 2021 at https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/reduce-your-food-waste-footprint

Retail waste

• customers changing their minds while shopping and not putting items back where they picked them up from (i.e. bags of frozen produce on regular shelves, lettuce in freezer);
• packaging damaged during handling;
• temperature-sensitive products being left out too long;
• standards that overemphasize appearance of produce.

Food waste and the environment

Food waste not only means resources have been wasted, it also contributes to climate change.

Food waste causes about 6% of global green house gas emissions that contribute to climate change ^[5]’On a global scale, food waste is responsible for 6% of GHG emissions’ . — Elphick, Laura. How to reduce your food waste footprint. EIT Food. 4 March 2021. Accessed April 2021 at https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/reduce-your-food-waste-footprint and financially, results in €870 billion of economic losses globally per year. ^[6]Elphick, Laura. How to reduce your food waste footprint. EIT Food. 4 March 2021. Accessed April 2021 at https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/reduce-your-food-waste-footprint

Activities for today

• learn ways to upcycle food;
• join community efforts to identify food that would go to waste and help to capture it and redirect it to where it can be used;
• look for food sharing apps;
• lobby politicians for better food labelling to help reduce food waste;
• buy in bulk only if you know the food can be stored for a long time, and that you will use it in that time frame;
• rotate your food cupboards: put newer cans and jars at the back, and bring older ones to the front;
• if you throw out too many leftovers in the fridge because you can’t see what’s in containers, consider switching to see-through containers;
• treat left-overs as plan-overs — plan when you will use them;
• try to measure how much food is wasted in your household in a week, and think about how that could be reduced.

Resources

Make better use of your freezer — learn how to freeze stuff. The best resources on the web for freezing food are at the National Center for Home Food Preservation, in the how-to freezing section.

Learn what to do with excess bread!

• bread pudding recipes;
• dry your own bread crumbs.

Food waste courses

From Waste to Value: How to Tackle Food Waste (free course, University of Reading, valid as of May 2021)

Understanding Food Labels (free course, University of Reading, valid as of May 2021)

Further reading

The cost of food waste, by EIT Food

Save the food by NRDC

History

Historically food wastage was pretty much an unknown concept.

Cooks knew what to do with excess food and how to prevent food waste. Many home cooks today don’t have those skills to preserve excess food to store it for the future. It just hasn’t been deemed necessary to teach food preservation anymore, because since the 1950s wasted food can be easily, cheaply and immediately replaced.

Stop Food Waste Day had its beginnings in 2017:

“Stop Food Waste Day was an initiative launched in the United States by a food services company called Compass group in 2017. The initiative later went global in 2018.” ^[7]Sunny, Suneeta. Stop Food Waste Day 2021: Easy Tips To Reduce Wastage, New York: International Business Times. 28 April 2021. Accessed May 2021 at https://www.ibtimes.com/stop-food-waste-day-2021-easy-tips-reduce-wastage-3189288

Sources

Anderton, Sarah. Stop Food Waste (to)Day. London, England: Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management. Accessed May 2021 at https://www.ciwem.org/news/stop-food-waste-(to)day

Sevilla, Nina. Food Matters City Partners Work Every Day to Stop Food Waste. New York City: Natural Resources Defense Council, 28 April 2021. Accessed April 2021 at https://www.nrdc.org/experts/nina-sevilla/food-matters-city-partners-work-every-day-stop-food-waste