“The global paradox that a third of all food grown and produced never makes it into people’s mouths – even as 800 million people suffer from hunger” and “if food loss and waste were its own country, it would be the Third-Largest Greenhouse Gas Emitter” (Grady, 2016). These results indicate how food waste can be a big issue in environment protection and global starvation.
Food waste is commonly seen in our daily life, from farms to every household. Every day we dump leftovers from our meals into the green bins and the city will send recycling personnel to clean up the rest. However, the leftovers from households are only accounted for a very small portion of the total food waste. In fact, a huge portion of food waste comes from agricultural lands and farms. In order to maximize profits, most retailers prefer selling perfect-looking products, which means the ones with stains or flaws would be thrown away as wastes. Using apple as an example, in order for an apple to be quickly sold in the market, it must be free from dirt. This means if a perfectly grown apple happened to fall, its chance of being purchased is less than the other dirt-free ones. Furthermore, as a former personal experience, my grandmother owns a grape farm in Taiwan, and every year when wholesalers come to check the quality of the grapes, there is always a large portion of grapes that they are not interested in purchasing. Nevertheless, those unwanted grapes actually have perfectly fine appearance. Numerically, it is estimated that 300 billion tons of grapes are being thrown away annually on average.
Due to the huge amount of food waste, the biggest retail chain in France decided to recalibrate the foods and launched the program called inglorious fruits and vegetables. The retailers will buy the products which the producers would usually just recycle, and put them on sale for 30% off. The sales of these foods reached 1.2 tons per store in the first two days from the launching of the program. Moreover, the program has increased store traffic and raised awareness towards food waste as well.
Lastly, many big corporations have already noticed the problems caused by food wastes. Firms such as Unilever, Nestle, and Rockefeller have already made commitment to cut the amount of produced food waste. Cutting food waste and changing how people view “ugly” food is no doubt processes that take certain time to see the consequences since they require efforts from every one of us. Fortunately, since selling “ugly” food will not only increase stores’ profits, it also helps reducing food waste, and I am looking forward to see this program being carried out in Vancouver.
http://www.greenbiz.com/article/unilever-nestle-usda-rockefeller-unite-cut-food-waste
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQQMygivn0g
