Hidden Under the Radar: Food Waste

According to the Food and Agriculture of the United Nations, wasted food from the world’s most developed countries would be MORE than enough to feed the 870 million starving people around the world. In the U.S. alone $162 billion worth of food is dumped into landfills where it decomposes into methane, a greenhouse gas. Food waste alone contributes about 7% to the total greenhouse gas emissions.

According to NatGeo, “… a lot of food rots in fields, or is lost as a result of poor transportation networks, or spoils in markets that lack proper preservation techniques.”  In a country where food is plentiful, it is hard to notice wasteful expenditures and their effects. We need to advocate better storage throughout the chain of transportation.  Monitor temperatures and bacteria levels. Install truck-trailer refrigeration or, on the local level, the award winning “Micro Cold Storage” invented by students of CalTech in 2012.

Innovative technology is only one half of the solution. The other half comes from consumers actively caring for the food they buy, store and consume. Don’t buy in excess or wastefully throw out good quality food. A banana may look bad on the outside but may still be perfectly delicious once you peel its skin off. Is it a moral obligation to care about food waste? Yes. Is it economically healthy? Yes. Like anything else that’s difficult, it will take time. It will take time for people to appreciate the food on their dinner table and to be thankful they aren’t one of hundreds of millions of people around the world that starve every night.