Lor food waste is a shame, let’s face it. In our energy-intensive world, we throw away a third of the food produced. A third, yes. An avalanche of rubbish never passed on the table.
Fruit is the most wasted food on the planet. The United States leads the way, with 39.3 grams per week (photo Getty Images).
A sort of nameless and dignified nation that ranks immediately after the United States and China for greenhouse gas emissions, which overheat the planet. A Moloch that exploits 30 percent of the area covered by agricultural land in the world and that devours an amount of water comparable to the annual flow of the Volta River.
The enormous production of food and its waste are an indubitable sign “of our formidable intelligence in desperate conflict with our formidable stupidity” as the writer Ian McEwan describes human nature in the short essay just published by Einaudi, The space of imagination.
“The space of imagination” by Ian McEwan (Einaudi).
Piles of food that have been grown, processed and transported empty, end up in the bin. While the number of hungry people has risen to 828 million. While Europe is facing an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions. While we experience the summers of drought. As we undergo climate change which is also linked to food production.
As we erode the fertile surface of the Earth. While we plunder the seas of their fish and while we destroy forests to obtain intensive farming. While the population is about to exceed the current eight billion, with a food requirement that could require an increase in production of up to 70 percent in 2050.
In this there is no logic, there are no values. The fight against waste is one of the global challenges that will be remembered on October 16 in the events for World Food Day, launched by the UN. And it is a challenge that starts from the single individual.
Who hasn’t thrown a rotten peach, a hard sandwich or a liter of expired milk in the trash? It’s an automatic habit, but we should ask ourselves more often what implications are behind that gesture, well beyond the economic damage to one’s wallet.
A cartoon by Altan on the theme of food waste
The agroeconomist Andrea Segrècreator of the campaign Zero waste and scientific director ofWaste Watcher International Observatoryhe writes in his latest essay, D (i) right to food (Science Express): “Domestic waste in Italy is worth seven billion euros in 2022. And this figure, almost half a point of GDP, is “only” the economic value of the goods we buy and then do not consume; net, therefore, of the cost of natural capital (soil, water, energy), economic (inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, fuels …) and the economic and ecological cost of waste disposal ».
To realize this, just a few data on the tons of food that go into the garbage are enough.
“D (i) right to food” by Andrea Segrè (Scienza Express).
The hidden energy
Food waste in Italian homes is one million and 866 thousand tons in 2022corresponding to those seven billion euros calculated by Segrè (to which are added almost five million and 165 thousand tons of food lost in the production and distribution chain, according to data from the Waste Watcher International Observatory).
If we try to add the energy costestimated at 4.02 billion (based on the current cost of electricity), we find that the value of food waste soars to more than 11 billion.
It is a dizzying figure, not far from the 14 billion allocated by the government to tackle the energy crisis. This is why the advice not to waste food should be one of those already suggested (and sacrosanct), such as sparing the time in the shower or using the dishwasher.
You buy too much
Food is not a commodity. It represents the satisfaction of the primary need for survival, arouses physical and mental pleasure. It is a beautiful thought, it tells stories, it contains knowledge. When it loses its symbolic value, however, it is perceived as an object and then it can be thrown away.
Waste embodies one of the faces of consumerism. Fill the fridge, cram the pantry, pile bundles of ham “for the son’s sandwich”, chicken breasts “if you need a second”, brioche “so the child has a snack”, three parmesan packages “so much were on offer”, soft and hard cheese, fresh and dry pasta, marinated and smoked salmon. Too much.
“One in two Italians (47 per cent) admits that they often forget the food they buy46 percent say that the food was fresh from the refrigerator of the shops and at home it spoiled quickly »says Segrè.
“One in three Italians (30 percent) confesses to miscalculating the quantities of food they serve at home, but also (33 per cent) of being worried about not having enough food in the pantry, and therefore of over-shopping. The Waste Watcher data therefore demonstrates that there is ample room for improvement in the food purchase and management phases“.
The hidden water
Saving is also water. With climate change taking its toll, drought worsens in some areas, as experienced in Italy this summer. Therefore we discuss the urgency of reshaping distribution or irrigation networks, but each of us should also consider individual consumption for drinking, cooking, washing. And reflect on the water it takes to produce food.
Throwing an apple is equivalent to wasting 70 liters of waterthrow an egg 135 liters, a cup of coffee 140 liters, a glass of milk 200 liters (Fao water).
Loss along the supply chains
Waste refers to food suitable for consumption but knowingly discarded in the retail or home stages. Loss, on the other hand, occurs before food reaches the consumer due to problems in the production, storage, processing and distribution phases.
For the market of industrialized countries, where the winners are prized cuts of meat and pears without a dent, a reckless amount of food is excluded before reaching the marketbecause it would remain unsold.
The fishermen themselves search in the nets and put back into the sea for fish that do not meet the standards of wealthy Western buyers, accustomed to the same monochord tastes.
The usual sea bream, the usual veal fillet, the usual strawberries all the same, all red. Pounds and kilos of lumpy fruit and imprecise vegetables end up in incineratorswith additional expenditure of energy.
It is claimed that the apple is turned and shiny as in the Snow White fairy tale. But apples don’t come from the realm of fantasy. They are like we are, some wounded, others bruised. And instead the defect is not forgiven, because the average buyer considers them as thingstending to the perfection of a Barbie, not part of a living tree.
Where, on the other hand, food retains its ancient value, in the South of the world, the crop can rot in the scorching sun, fail to arrive due to drought, or be destroyed by armies of insects. Good or bad, it suffers from the absence of modernity.
About one third of total greenhouse gas emissions depend on the food system. Each step of the process, from manufacturing to packaging, releases carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that alter temperatures.
When food is wasted, so are all those emissions. Not only. Energy is needed to dispose of those scraps that so casually pass from the fridge to the dustbin. And once the wet waste reaches landfills, it decomposes and releases more methane. Hence, minimizing waste can be an easy way for an individual to help contain global warming.
Rivers of fossil fuels
Stopping food waste would also lead to a decrease in the environmental impact due to the use of fossil fuels in supply chains. In Italy, food production absorbs over 11 per cent of total industrial energy consumptionfor approximately 13.3 million tons of oil equivalent.
More is not better
“By now everyone, the Church in the first place, urges us to change lifestyles, to renew a sobriety of consumption and to protest against the culture of excess, waste, exaggeration, what Michael Grunwald calls the culture of “more is better, more is better” »writes Segrè.
“Now the system leads us to go into debt to increase our consumption (discretionary: the crisis originates from “rich” peoples), a step that has now become indispensable, it seems, to support a production mechanism drugged and spoiled by consumption. Instead one would say (and do): less and better, less and better ».
Fruit, the most wasted food
Fruit is the most wasted food on the planet. The United States leads the way, with 39.3 grams per week on average per person (Cross Country Waste Watcher International data). In Italy, grams drop to 30, 3 of fruit, followed by salad with 26.4 grams per capita and fresh bread with 22.8 grams, vegetables with 21.
Elsewhere, in the ranking of the most wasted foods, for example, milk and yogurt (27.1 grams per week in Germany), cold cuts and salami (21.6 grams in France), rice and cereals (27.2 grams in Brazil) enter, ready-to-eat foods (11.5 grams in Japan).
Human beings are already an ecological catastrophe, but now we are aware that we are. “I live in a wounded world and I know I am the wounded” as the novelist John Green wrote. We know how to lighten our footprint and not trying to do so is ethically unacceptable.
Eliana Liotta (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Eliana Liotta is a journalist, writer and science popularizer. On iodonna.it and on the main platforms (Spreaker, Spotify, Apple Podcast and Google Podcast) you will find his podcast series The good that I want.
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