Essays on Food Waste

Food “waste” refers to food that is fit for consumption but consciously discarded at the retail or consumption phases.

The causes of food waste are numerous and occur throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption.

Food loss and waste is a major part of the impact of agriculture on climate change (it amounts to 3.3 billion tons of CO2e emissions annually) and other environmental issues, such as land use, water use and loss of biodiversity.

Prevention of food waste, reuse, animal feed, and recycling of nutrients.

One third of all food produced is lost or wasted – around 1.3 billion tonnes of food.
Up to 10% of global greenhouse gases comes from food that is produced, but not eaten.
Wasting food is worse than total emissions from flying (1.9%), plastic production (3.8%) and oil extraction (3.8%).
Almost half of all fruit and vegetables produced are wasted.