Dealing with Food Waste
“Roughly a third of the food produced globally is wasted annually while 663 million people are still malnourished.” This is a major issue globally as it not only results in significant economic losses but also contributes to environmental problems. Food waste contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, depletes resources such as land, water, and energy, and increases the production of waste in landfills, leading to pollution.
Photo by Tom Fisk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/drone-shot-of-dumpsite-3174350/
According to a study by the University of California Davis, food waste could be usually found more in developed countries from supermarkets, restaurants, and consumers purchasing goods from grocery stores. The problem of food waste could be generated by the encouragement to buy more than the consumers need, overstocking shelves, inaccurately predicting shelf life, or damaging products. Although the study focuses on the US, this same reasoning is applicable in other countries with food waste as well.
Food waste coming from convenient stores in Japan
Below is a chart of the ‘Annual household food waste produced in selected countries worldwide as of 2020’ from Statista (in million metric tons per year).
Too Good To Go is an excellent example of a social business that targets the Food Waste problem. As described on their website, the app “helps stores and restaurants sell their surplus food through our free smartphone app. Customers choose a restaurant or store, they order a “surprise bag” of surplus food at a reduced price and then collect it from the store during a pre-set collection window.” They are operating in many parts of Europe and recently branched to North America.
Sadly, Too Good To Go is not yet available in Japan. But there are local social businesses with innovative ideas to address this concerning issue. The first example is Kudarashi https://kuradashi.jp/. This website allows expiring or close-to-expiring products to be sold at a significantly discounted price. The second example is Tabete https://tabete.me/ which allows supermarkets, restaurants, etc to sell food products that are going to be thrown out. After ordering on the app, you will pick up the food at the place according to the pickup time as this tends to be closing time.
These businesses show us we still have time to take actions to balance the distribution of food products so what we have known about food waste can be changed for the better. To mitigate this issue, individuals and organizations can take steps such as reducing food purchases, properly storing food, and composting. Governments can also implement policies to regulate food waste and support initiatives that reduce waste and promote sustainability. All in all, redistributing the food source needs collective effort from all stakeholders. Only when we mobilize enough effort and awareness, we can decrease the imbalance hunger phenomena we are living through right now.