Fix our food systems by addressing food waste.
As I write this column, the cold and gloomy scenery of winter is long behind me, and I’m basking in the lovely weather and wearing shorts as I gaze up at the brilliant skies above London. My garden is covered with snow by the time this is forwarded to the editor. I swear that this isn’t filler or typical British small talk, but as it happens, weather conversation is one of the earliest signs that our climate is changing right in front of our eyes. What on earth does this have to do with the food sector, you ask? Everything, in my opinion.
Eating our way out of a serious issue
Currently, 10% of the world’s population is undernourished, and our food system is responsible for almost one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.In spite of this, we throw away 40% of the food that is produced.2. The cause? A seriously defective, disjointed, and basically damaged food system that is more capable of fueling climate change than people.
However, what is the response or the resolution? It is all too simple to put our heads in the sand when faced with the realities of our current situation because we feel discouraged and disengaged from the size of the task at hand. But rather than placing blame, this piece emphasizes how important it is for all of us in the food industry to work together to improve our food system. We may effect genuine change if we recognize the urgency of our actions and the value of cooperation and teamwork.
I think we can overcome a dysfunctional food system and climate change by eating our way out of it. What I mean by food waste is not that we should support an overindulgent lifestyle or disregard the advise of nutritionists. Food waste has a major negative effect on the environment. Indeed, food waste ranks third among nations that create greenhouse gases, following the United States and China.
The valuable resources utilized to generate the food are being wasted by our collective food waste. We effectively waste land when we destroy forests for cultivation; a landmass the size of China is utilized to generate food that ends up in our garbage.4 It’s a waste of the fuel for transportation, the power for storage, the labor needed for harvesting, the fertilizers used to our soil, and the water utilized to grow the food.
My request to all who are reading this is to explore and then act on how you can reduce food waste within your own organisation, as well as in your daily lives. Seven years ago myself and my co‑founder started a business called Too Good To Go to empower people, businesses and consumers alike to reduce food waste by using our app. Our vision is clear: a planet with no food waste.
Too Good To Go was designed to make it easy to sell food businesses’ surplus, unsold food. The concept is simple. We connect businesses that have surplus food with consumers wanting to buy this food, thus preventing it going to waste. Every ‘Magic Bag’ of food sold is a bag potentially diverted from the bin.
In addition to our app, we have started campaigns like “Look, Smell, Taste, Don’t Waste” to further this vision. The campaign attempts to address the misunderstanding surrounding date labels, which causes over half a billion pounds of food to be wasted yearly in the UK.5. The campaign’s primary goal is to make the meaning of “Best Before” dates more clear. To this end, it is collaborating with a variety of FMCG brands, such as Nestle, PepsiCo, and Danone.
The meaning of expiration dates is unclear to more than half of the British populace.Six Our campaign, which involves working with FMCG manufacturers, uses on-pack iconography to convey the message that consumers should “Look, Smell, Taste” food to determine if it’s still edible after its Best Before date has past. It is important to remember that food that has past its Best Before date is still safe to eat as long as it has been properly preserved. Best Before is not a safety metric like a “Use By” date; rather, it is a quality advisory statistic determined by the food producer to suggest when a product is at its best.
There have also been other significant advancements in this field. Big-name shops like Tesco, Co-op, and Morrisons, to mention a few, have switched from “Use By” to “Best Before” dates on products where it’s safe to do so, or they’ve eliminated Best Before dates completely in other cases, including fresh, raw fruit and vegetables.
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Bringing sustainability and food safety together
The difficulties are already audible to me; what about food safety? To put it plainly, we want to give customers the power to decide for themselves if food that has passed its Best Before date is still of a quality they want to eat. We believe that food safety and sustainability go hand in hand, and our guidelines make this obvious. They don’t have to conflict with one another; rather, they can work in tandem to mend our flawed food system.
This fresh viewpoint begins to make the image more obvious. Food waste is a good place to start if we want to address issues with our food system and how it contributes to climate change. It’s not necessary for you to believe me, though. Reducing food waste is the most direct and significant way that we can counteract climate change within our zone of influence, according to the experts behind Project Drawdown, the world’s most influential resource on climate change.7. Therefore, let us all in the food sector remind ourselves in our day-to-day actions that sustainability does not have to be sacrificed for food safety. While making sure that our customers can safely enjoy our food, we also need to take a stand against food waste.