The key numbers to understanding food waste are presented in this article.

A third of the world’s food ends up in the trash today, enough to feed the 820 million hungry people in the world. Not to mention, points out the latest IPCC report, the environmental impact of this formidable waste. The cause: the overconsumption of the richest countries.

Products damaged at the time of harvest, unsold supermarket items, leftovers thrown in the trash … Food lost and wasted throughout the production chain represents billions of meals. However, it is precisely 2 billion additional mouths that will need to be fed by 2050, while 820 million people are still hungry around the world today.

The latest IPCC report highlights the role of reducing food waste in mitigating global warming and reducing threats to food security, according to waste management experts at at INRA. Because the stakes are high: if it were a country, food waste would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Also since 2016, France has been forcing supermarkets to give their unsold goods to associations. But real progress can only be accompanied by a profound change in our Western consumption habits, which overestimate everyone’s food needs and throw away the products before they expire.

All kinds of savings could be achieved by reducing food waste. From dumpster rental cost reduction to medical bill decrease from less people with obesity or Type-2 diabetes, the list is long.

A third of the food produced is lost

Food waste has tripled in 50 years. Today, 1.3 billion tonnes of edible food ends up in the trash every year around the world: this is 40 tonnes per second. A figure that could reach 2.1 billion by 2030.

The rich waste twice as much as the poor

Annual production of edible food varies from 460 to 900 kg per capita worldwide. So that at similar rates of loss, the waste varies from simple to double between the West and the regions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

In France it represents a total of 10 million tonnes of food, for an estimated value of 16 billion euros, as much as the 2019 budget of the Ministries of Agriculture and Labor combined.

The waste chain differs from country to country

Consumers in rich countries waste up to 20 times more food than those in developing countries. And in poor countries, it is mainly the lack of infrastructure that causes more than 50% of the losses.

The environmental impact

The environmental impact varies according to the products thrown away
The carbon footprint of a food depends on agricultural practices and the greenhouse gases produced at each stage of the life cycle. Emissions linked to land use for fodder (N2O) and ruminants and manure management (CH4) make meat the most emitting product per kilo wasted.

Overconsumption of food

But waste also concerns overconsumption of food. Excessive calorie intake is the cause of overweight for more than 1.9 billion adults worldwide.

Reducing overconsumption and better distributing food would be enough to eradicate hunger, reducing the impact of the surplus on the environment and health.

Global warming has been one of the hottest topics in the past few years as practically every news network and blogger has sounded off on it, not to mention that numerous scientists and researchers keep on bringing it up in relation to new findings and concerns.

However, after all the studies that have been done on it, people are still quite divided as to whether or not global warming is actually something caused by humans or if it’s simply a natural process part of a greater cycle which spans across thousands of years.

To start things off, it is important to determine just how natural this warming up process is; after all, it has been established that over the past 650,000 years, the Earth has undergone four cycles of temperatures rising and falling. However, the truly damning factor is the fact that during these 650,000 years, the atmospheric CO2 levels have never, ever gone up above 300 CO2 parts per million.

However, around 1950, that barrier has been breached for the first time as far as researchers can determine. Currently, the level of atmospheric CO2 is estimated at around 380 parts per million. While it is true that part of this increase can be attributed to the Earth entering the part of the climate cycle where the temperatures go up, only the industrial revolution, a man-caused event, can explain why the levels have increased so drastically.

Another important evidence of global warming which nobody can overlook is the ice capes melting. The ice in the arctic has been disappearing at an alarming rate, and it is predicted that somewhere around 2040, the arctic may very well have a summer devoid of any ice. Even the current conditions are far from being ideal as the local indigenous cultures and fauna are having a hard time surviving with an ever-diminishing icy surface.

The evidence of global warming doesn’t stop there; many people have noticed that in recent times there has been a surge of activity in regards to dangerous weather-related events, including hurricanes, tornadoes, strong tropical storms, wildfires, typhoons, etc… etc…

Many experts believe that the sudden shifts in atmospheric pressure are to blame as they cause great imbalances; after great heat waves, which can actually cause wildfires, all of the evaporated water needs to come down, and it often does in a very violent fashion.

In order to determine just how responsible humans are for these changes, more than two thousand scientists in over a hundred and thirty countries have come to the conclusion that deforestation, pollution and industrialization are the main cause for the tremendous increase of greenhouse gases that get trapped in the atmosphere. As most people are aware, these greenhouse gases prevent heat from escaping the Earth, consequently heating it up, causing the global warming observed today.

What can humans do to fix it? Long story short, to repair the damages and end the degradations, practically everything about this world needs to change in an aggressiveway. When looking at the big picture, we are all alive and well because we have built a society which revolves around technology and industrialization… unfortunately, following this way of living damages the Earth, and it seems that it can’t take much more of it.

Our reach is exceeding our grasp, and until the people in charge are willing to give up some of their comfort and money in order to look for alternatives to this problem, it will get worse.