Towards the uncertain road of achieving 2030 goals: Focus on Food Waste and Food Loss

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2015 by all the members of the United Nations as part of the UN Resolution 70/1, has an unprecedented ambition, setting 17 goals and 169 targets that all the countries must achieve by 2030 in order “to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”.

This study will focus on Food Waste and Food Loss in meeting various Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). In fact, it has the potential to generate win-wins across all the dimensions targeting hunger, that is to say – SDG: 1, 2, 12, 13, 14 and 15.

Distinction between Food Waste and Food Loss

In order to tackle such pressing challenges, we must understand where along the supply chain the wastage happens. For this reason, a distinction between food waste and food loss could measure the amount of food that goes to waste.

Food loss: mainly caused by the inefficiency of underdeveloped infrastructure and/or logistics

Food waste: waste of food attributable to the purchasing behavior of the retailer and the final consumer. Food is wasted in many ways, for example:

  • Fresh produce that doesn’t meet the considered optimal standard due to its size, shape, or color and therefore removed during sorting actions
  • Discarded food by retailers or consumers when its close to or beyond the best before date indicated
  • Unused or leftover food thrown out from households or restaurants.

Food losses + Food waste = Food Wastage

According to the Food Waste Index 2021, each year the production surplus amounts to 931 million tons of food that equals to 17% of the annual production.

Along with these, we could also measure damages:

  • Economically and Socially: food wastage represents economic loss for all actors along the supply food chain, including the consumers. Moreover, it is generating negative social impacts that could be avoided such as food poverty and greenhouse gas emissions

  • Environmentally: food wastage represents inefficient use of natural resources (water, land, soil, energy) and human resources such as labor.

The Food Waste Index Report stated that if food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. This map shows only the Annual Household Food Waste recorded in selected countries, China produces the highest absolute figure of almost 90 million tonnes of food per year, followed by India discarding almost 70 million tonnes. Both countries being the most populated. In gray color, are countries without data recorded.

The Environmental Impacts of Food Production

Food system is a key contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, it is in fact responsible for over a quarter (26%) of global emissions.

As seen in the bar plot above, four categories are considered key elements in quantifying food GHG emissions.

  1. Supply chains account for 18% of food emissions. Supply chains include the entire food processing steps, from converting farm produce into final products. Therefore from transportation, packing until retail reaching the hands of the final customer.

  2. Livestock together with Fisheries account for 31% of food emissions. There are several ways livestock and fisheries contribute to emissions, for example, through the production of methane during the process of enteric fermentation. This percentage of emissions relates only to the on-farm production.

  3. Crop production accounts for 27% of food emissions, coming both form the direct human consumption and animal feed.

  4. Ultimately, land use accounts for 24% of food emissions. Land use is intended to be the sum of land converted into cropland due to agricultural expansion. As Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data reported “half of the world’s habitable land, that is free of ice and desert, is used for agriculture.”

To understand better the circumstances of environmental impacts related to food production, observe the bar graphs showcasing the “food prints” of certain products we consume daily.

The paradox of scarcity in abundance

There is an unprecedented proportion of food crises. According to WFP, the number of people suffering from food insecurity this current year, is expected to be 345.2 million doubling the number of 2020, describing “2023: another year of extreme jeopardy for those struggling to feed their families” It is alarming with such a rapid increase, making us question whether the aim of ending hunger and malnutrition is even possible to reach by the time of 2030 when regulations around the world has still a long journey to go through.

Food poverty refers to the inability to acquire or eat an adequate quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways (or the uncertainty of being able to do so). Dowler,2003 Indeed, food poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon that affects material, social, psycho-social and emotional.

Countries and States that have Laws against Food Waste:

Many governments work with the private sector to reduce food wastage, however only few have actually enacted them. In the map above, we can observe France, Italy, South Korea, China, Singapore, and six states of USA: California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont. Particularly in South Korea, residents are required to throw their food waste down to a bin that operates by RFID chip. When throwing, the government imposed the resident of scanning their chip, as soon as the “designate food waste bag” is introduced to the bin, it is weighed and the resident is then charged based on it. See the process on the infographic provided by South Korea’s Ministry of Environment (2014). Handbook on Reducing Food Waste! below:

Conclusions

The reduction of food wastage is obviously not the solution to end food poverty however it could help in meeting various Sustainable Development Goals, with food waste being a large contributor to the global waste problem as well as to the increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Definitely, countries around the world has to work around the clock to achieve a better and sustainable future for all. Global citizens are called to do their part too, from baby steps of being responsible to discard waste, not waiting for the government to billed us on our food wastage to begin.

BYE

That was fun!