Foodwaste

Causes and consequences:
Much of the causes to foodwaste is beacause the food doesn't reach a specific criteria for it to be able to sell in stores. In many countries different kinds of foods has a specific criteria it needs to reach before it can go to the storeshelves. Fruits and vegetabels for example often has to be a certain size before being allowed to go to the stores that sell them. They can't be too small or even too big, and if they have any marks or bruises, they will be thrown straight into the trash can, even though they're completely edible. A lot of food also goes bad before it can be eaten, because it isn't taken care of. Many people throw away food at home beacause they're scared that it's gone bad, and

We throw away a lot of food, and that is an enormous problem! Foodwaste is a massive driver of global warming, and is often an overlooked problem in the world. To produce food, we use energy - a lot of energy. And then when we throw the food away, we waste the energy - and yet people starve across the globe every day! But how much food is wasted? And what consequences does foodwaste have?

What is foodwaste?

Foodwaste, in short terms, is edible food that get's thrown away. In 2019, 17% of all the food in the world that was available for consumers, got wasted, that's about 931 million tons of food, according to the United Nations! Annually, around 1/3 of all the food in the world gets wasted, and that is about 1.3 billion tons of food, according to the United Nations!

Photo by:

Mariana Medvedeva

What can we do to stop foodwaste?

Photo of half finished food

Keywords on this page:

Foodwaste
Consumption
Production

What is foodwaste?
How harmfull is it?
How much food gets wasted?
Can we stop it?

All of these questions and more are answered on this page!

many people don't take care of their leftovers. A little food here and there quickly adds up, and it becomes huge amounts after a while. Food needs a lot of energy and space when produced, so when we throw away this food, all the resources that gets used on making the food completely goes to waste, everything. Therefore all the greenhouse gases that gets emitted is for nothing. And when you throw away food and it ends up in landfills it cannot decompose organically and therefore produces methane, which empowers the greenhouse gas effect.

Foodwaste is a massive problem, and causes a lot of unnecesarry use of valuable resources. Food consumption and production needs to be managed better, and us individuals can have a huge direct impact on foodwaste! Thankfully there are plenty of things we can do to lower our waste of food, and it is really simple!

Here is a list of a few things you can do to help prevent foodwaste: