What Happens To The Food We Throw Away?

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE FOOD WE

THROW AWAY?

Since the prehistoric age, people have been collecting food from the wild, hunting, and making their own meals and beverages. From the stone age menu, with roasting over fire and fishing, the human race developed, as well as its diet and eating habits.

Once upon a time, someone came up with an idea to start cultivating the land and raising Local Group Novi Sad

animals that made drastic changes in history. leads to a non-existing oxygen inflow needed for

From a very simple diet, we ‘evolved’ to having a diverse nutrition and reliable food industry, agrochemicals, fast food, genetically modified organisms (GMO), and synthetic ingredients.

Somehow, we ended up exploiting all our goods, and gambling our health and our future for the waste and methane (highly flammable gas that warming and climate change).

sake of fish sticks and chocolate muffins.

Wasting food and climate change

Food industry definitely represents one of the main causes of climate change, as it affects raising the level of greenhouse gasses and deforestation almost 40% of food that is being produced gets and compulsive shopping. Also, a lot of fruits and

a lot, and brings other negative consequences to the human race and the environment.

“In the EU, around 88 million tonnes of food waste are generated annually with associated costs estimated at 143 billion euros.” (FUSIONS)

All the processes within this industry, including production, processing, packing, and delivering (transportation) of food, adds up to the CO2 emission and global warming.

Except that, a lot of that food ends up in landfills releasing methane, that causes more harm than CO2 does.

How does the food we throw away affect climate change?

have to pass for plastic items to decompose. Have you ever thought of food that is being wasted? Wasted food is an organic substance that gets decomposed under the action of microorganisms. For that process to be accomplished, oxygen is needed.

Now, take a guess, is there enough oxygen on landfills? No!

Landfills are not just the layers of trash. Besides organic substances, they consist of a huge amount of plastics and metal that are not biodegradable. Those layers of trash are being compacted, which degradation.

What do we have as a result? Partially decomposed causes fire on landfills, contributing to global

Then, why do we throw food away?

There are several reasons why food is being thrown away. In many poor, less privileged countries, discarded because of the bad infrastructure and storage systems. In industrialised countries, the reason hides behind bad habits of the population.

“In the EU, an estimated 20% of the total food produced is lost or wasted, while 33 million people cannot afford a quality meal every second day.” (European Commission)

53% of the total food that is actively thrown away comes from the households. As food became more accessible and affordable, it led us to excessive vegetables never get to customers because it doesn’t satisfy aesthetic conditions.

NEW SECTION

Sonja Borota

We always talk about plastics and how several years

So, who are the bad guys? Where do the wrongdoers sit? In our own home!

Why does the food in our household end up in the trash bin?

Usually, we just forget to eat it, do not store our groceries properly or we do not have enough time cost. Every time you waste food, think of the cost globally

to consume them. In some other cases, packaging can be a problem too, since in many stores you cannot buy the amount you need, but a certain amount in a package. Too much on the plate, too estimated that ceasing wasting food would reduce

much in the bin. To sum up, we buy more than we need.

Also, when shopping, in 90% of cases, we are choosing ‘perfect’ food and that way, unconsciously, contributing to wasting food. Why is that a problem? So, every time you choose a perfect and ‘pretty’ apple, the one less perfect stays uneaten and after some time, if no one buys it, it’s being wasted. Is the unwanted apple bad for you? It is not! It is equally good, with the same nutrition values as the perfect-looking one.

Because of our choices, supermarkets are facing financial losses since huge amounts of “undesired” food are being wasted, even if they were fresh and edible. To reduce their losses, they have created standards for the food - what it has to look like to be in their stores. Farmer’s goods now have to please many rules about the colour, size and shape.

Result: 20% of produced fruits and vegetables never get to consumers because they are “ugly”. Think of this the next time you go shopping. Is it really important to have a nice looking apple when making cake? Again, it’s not.

What you should be thinking about when throwing away food?

You have bought food, but it stood there for a long time, it is spoiled, and now you have to throw it away. You are not taking it too seriously, because it feels cheap and you do not pay attention to it. you, but globally, throwing food away has a high it requires, including land, water, manpower, CO2 emission, fertilizer, pesticides.

Take in consideration that: 1. 1.3 billion tons of food are being wasted 2. 2.3 trillion of Euros is the financial damage caused by wasting food

The question is, can we stop climate change by not throwing our food away?

Maybe we cannot stop it, but we can highly affect it in reducing the greenhouse gasses emission. It is Maybe it does not represent a big money loss for

greenhouse gasses emission by 8% globally.

What can you do to reduce wasting food?

1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. Plan your meals. When you go shopping, do not go when you are hungry, and buy only necessary groceries; Store your food properly; Cook for two days to avoid waste; What will not be eaten immediately, freeze it; Compost.

Also, remember, so-called ‘best before’ date on packaging means it should be best consumed by the date that is marked, but it does not mean ‘throw it after the date’! and deemed automatically spoiled, it can still be edible and adequate.

Additionally, the next time you think of throwing away your food, please remember that our food is responsible for 26% of greenhouse gasses emissions and below you can find the CO2 footprint of some of the groceries you are using on daily basis:

Grocery

Carbon Footprint (kg CO2/kg of product)

Milk Cheese Eggs Chocolate Peas Rice Pork Apple Nuts Fish (farmed) Banana 3.0 21.0 4.5 19.0 0.9 4.0 7.0 0.4 0.3 5.0 0.7

Lastly, buy less, and with this way affect producers to start producing more sustainably and ethically.