Reduce Food Waste – the Why and How

We often see many facts and figures on food waste when we search for the topic. For example, in general, 1/3 of the food we buy ends up in the bin, which means 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted each year on a global scale, and the number for Ireland is over one million tonnes annually. Beyond these scary figures, what do we know about food waste? Wasting food is not just wasting money, all the resources used to produce food such as water, energy, and labour are wasted. In addition, the disposal of food waste in landfills, leads to greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change. The disposed food in landfills produces large quantities of methane gas, a potent greenhouse gas 25 times stronger than CO2, this significantly increases carbon footprint, impacting the climate and the planet we live on negatively.

What can we do to reduce food waste, especially those food waste that goes into landfills? There are many ways to tackle food waste issues, there is a good guide to follow – the Food Waste Hierarchy. We should prioritise preventing food waste at source, then feed the people through redistributing surplus food, and then feed the animals using food unsuitable for human consumption, covert the leftovers for industrial uses, then composting, and leave disposal as the last option.