International Day Of Awareness On Food Loss And Waste

V P Srivastava

Today is International Day of Awareness on Food Loss and Waste . One will surprise to know that world wastes one third of food produced.

According to FAO andU N Environment Programme world wastes one billion tonnes of food annually, this emerges at a time when food insecurity is rising globally.

When food is lost or wasted, all the resources that were used to produce this lost food, ie water, land, energy, labour, fertilizer and capital go to waste.

This also takes a tremendous environmental toll. Every step from production to consumption, food wastes create green house gases which is upto 10% of global climate change related emissions.

Food decomposing in landfills uses up oxygen and releases methane which is 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide . Carbon dioxide itself releases from ploughing and tilling.

With enormous amounts of land water fertilizers and pesticides and fuel spent in generating, transporting and selling food-each wasted morsel represents a degradation of nature-one discarded apple wastes the 125 litres of water that goes into its production.

With less food waste we can minimise excessive use of fertiliser and pesticides which has huge environmental impacts through nitrogen release that contributes to air and ground water pollution.

Significantly, the more food wastes, the more we deprive our fellow species -90% of animal species will lose habitats due to human wastefulness driving agricultural expansion by 2050 , studies show.

There is therefore a multiple bottomline to reducing food waste especially food security and environmental sustainability.

(V P Srivastava Environmental Activist and President C-CARBONS)