Editorial. The “food waste challenge” can be solved

Williams, I.D., Schneider, F. and Syversen, F. (2015) Editorial. The “food waste challenge” can be solved. Waste Management, 41, 1-2. (doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2015.03.034).

Abstract

We waste staggering quantities of food. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (2013) reported that whilst we produce about four billion metric tonnes of food every year, we lose 30–50% of this via poor practices in harvesting, storage and transportation, as well as market and consumer wastage. In addition, significant quantities of land, energy, fertilisers and water are lost in the production of foodstuffs that end up as waste. This is both perplexing and daunting given that whilst hundreds of millions of people are starving and consequently unhealthy, a significant fraction of the other half is obese and also consequently unhealthy. Dealing effectively with food waste is an important part of the ongoing global challenge to simultaneously prevent food waste whilst ensuring a sustainable and regular supply of foodstuffs and adequate nutrition to all parts of society.

Decreasing the amount of food waste (FW) significantly will give several positive impacts. As well as addressing the established social inequity and health problems, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the producers’ direct costs of FW are $750 billion per year, based on producer prices only (FAO, 2013). It is estimated that the total global economic mitigation potential for reducing waste sector emissions by 2030 is more than 1000 Mt CO2-eq at a cost of less than 100 US$ t?1 CO2-eq per year (Bogner et al., 2008). With the world’s population anticipated to reach 8 billion people by 2025, this quantity of wastage cannot continue for moral, ethical, health, environmental, social and economic reasons

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Contributors

Author: I.D. Williams

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