According to a new study recently published in PLOS One, humans waste one-third of all food that is available for consumption, which is twice as high as previously estimated. Researchers found a direct link between global food waste and wealth. The study shows people in poorer nations waste less food, but that they begin wasting more food as their income increases.
Using consumer expenditure, the study estimates that in 2011, globally, people were wasting 25% or as much as 727 calories per day that were available for human consumption. They compared these numbers to the 351 calories that were wasted per day in 2003. However, the 2003 numbers were off because they left out some of the largest nations including the United States. So, they recalculated using 2005 numbers and found the food waste calories to be at 526 per capita, per day.
The authors talk about the “affluence elasticity of food waste”, which shows as wealth grows food waste increases rapidly at first and then slowly tapers off. As this happens, poor and middle-income countries rapid food waste costs at least $6.70 per day.
The study warns that low-income nations will follow the same trend as their economies improve, resulting in an even greater increase in global food waste.
The United Nations environment program has a plan of action in place to try and eliminate half of the global food waste by 2030. As pointed out on the organization’s website, this is a much bigger issue than the attention it receives:
Globally, if food waste could be represented as its own country, it would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind China and the US. The resources needed to produce the food that becomes lost or wasted has a carbon footprint of about 3.3 billion tons of CO2.
This UN estimate puts annual global food waste at $1 trillion, or 1.3 billion tons of food, that end up rotting or exceeding its shelf life. This has been directly linked to “poor transportation and harvesting practices.”
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals program promotes sustainable production and consumption through “energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure and access to basic services…”
Part of the UN’s plan to try and fix this global food wasting problem includes involving government health authorities, producers, consumers, and businesspeople working together to create a sustainable food system described by the website:
A sustainable food system (SFS) is a food system that delivers food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition for (current and) future generations are not compromised.
They go on to say that “moving towards a more sustainable food system is critical,” and “urgent attention is required.”
If food waste continues to rise along with the expected population increase of another 2 billion people, then we are setting the human race up for an epic failure because we are overlooking this global problem.
