It’s not uncommon to hear someone utter the phrase, “my eyes were bigger than my stomach” as they decide not to finish the meal left on their plates. Unfortunately, the food that isn’t finished will more often than not end up in the trash, as opposed to saved for leftovers or even put in a compost heap.
In the past, we featured a film that was made to show how much quality edible food is being thrown away – yes, the “dumpster divers” can and do really eat out of the trash. But with those extreme cases put aside, it’s still scary to think about how that really affects the environment, not to mention the cost of eating.
In the infographic below, you can see the true statistics of how much food is wasted, albeit from a mainly UK perspective, and some of the stats are pretty surprising.
For instance, did you know that the methane from rotting food is 23 times worse than CO2, or that 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted around the globe?
Keep these stats in mind next time you’re about to scrape your plate into the trash, and consider your options to reduce food waste.
The large amount of fresh food waste is a lose-lose situation for the environment, the struggling families in today’s tough economy and for the food retailers. There is no single cure, or silver bullet for food waste reduction therefore, we should address the food waste problem in every link in our food supply chain. For example, the excess inventory of fresh perishables close to their expiration on supermarket shelves, combined with the consumer “Last In First Out” shopping behavior, might be the weakest link of the fresh food supply chain.
The new open GS1 DataBar standard enables applications that encourage efficient
consumer shopping by offering him automatic and dynamic purchasing incentives
for fresh perishables approaching their expiration dates before they end up in a landfill.
The “End Grocery Waste” App, which is based on the open GS1 DataBar standard,
encourages efficient consumer shopping behavior that maximizes grocery retailer
revenue, makes fresh food affordable for all families and effectively reduces the global carbon footprint.
Rod Averbuch
Chicago, IL
Those are great points, @rodaverbuch:disqus, and thanks for the tip about the End Grocery Waste app – I’ll be sure to check that out.