THIS is the time of the year again when food wastage in the Philippines is at its peak with parties here and there.
The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that during the holidays our household food waste increases by about 25 percent.
United Nations (UN)’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) defines food waste as “the discarding or alternative (non-food) use of food that is safe and nutritious for human consumption”.
In an Al Jazeera report in October this year, FAO reported that globally there is an estimated 1.3 billion tons of food which are wasted or lost annually.
“We waste about one-third of the food produced for human consumption, at a cost of $990 billion per year,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, told Al Jazeera.
FAO, in its State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 report, also stated that globally there are more than 820 million people who do not have enough to eat.
We see how ironic this could be that while the food we waste is in billions of tons, the people who do not have enough to eat number in millions.
Aside from relating food wastage to hunger, it also affects other key areas in our daily lives including climate change and biodiversity loss.
According to same report food waste currently generates eight percent of greenhouse gas emissions and food waste in landfills is disrupting food webs, as certain predators shift towards a diet of human trash.
Andersen has pointed clearly that one of the contributing factors of this wastage is because “individually, we think we waste very little.”
The World Wild Life (WWF), world’s leading conservation organization, has advised consumers to avoid tossing food in the trash by taking these steps:
“Try not to over prepare food; instead try to prepare “just enough.” Encourage friends and family to take leftovers home. Store leftovers in the freezer to enjoy after you’ve had a break from them for a little while. And search ‘holiday leftover recipes’ online for new ideas.”
As what Andersen pointed out: “What we put on our plate, or don’t, matters tremendously for the planet.”