Historians link the origin of food waste with the urbanization which emerged due to industrial revolution. Crowding within industrial towns was characterized with indiscriminate disposal of organic wastes and recurring epidemics of communicable diseases. Food wastes if not properly managed, is bad to the economy and environment, and is the second largest generator of the waste stream within American landfills. After food waste is sent to landfills, they emit green house gases like methane and carbon dioxide which have adverse impacts or effects on climate change. Moreover, resources like water, energy, fossil fuels, and land used for generating wasted food also go into waste.
Food waste is also linked to the environment in the sense that, despite the huge wasted food, one out of seven US citizens can categorized as food insecure. Food insecure households represented 14.5 percent of American families in 2010. This implies that approximately 45 million families in US never had access to adequate food to lead productive and healthy life. Hunger and malnutrition have negative psychological and physical impacts on child education, long-term health, and development.
Studies show that food wastes are as a result of overproduction, poor food management in households, and error within packaging weight. The topic of food wastes have attracted attention as well as gained recognition from many states. In the recent years, projects have been conducted to get figures to approximate the quantity of wasted food, for particular categories of the value added chain like retailers or households or even the entire economies, and the reasons for such behavior. Most of the studies regard food waste from the perspective of ecological as production of food is resource demanding, therefore, wasted food is a loss of resources.
Current Status of Waste Food
Approximately, 54% of the globe’s food wastage happens upstream at production, post-harvest management and storage. Forty-six percent of food wastage occurs downstream during the processing, distribution as well as consumption stages. As general pattern, advancing nations experience more food losses at agricultural production, whereas food wastage in the retail as well as consumer level seems to be higher within the middle or high income areas (it accounts for about 31-39 % of total waste) compared to low-income areas (which account for about 4-16%). The later food is wasted along the human chain, the higher the environmental impacts. This is because the environmental costs during processing, cooking, transport, and storage must be included in the initial costs of production.
Some of the identified world’s hot spots for food wastage include: wastage of cereals within Asia is a key challenge, with major effects on carbon dioxide release and land and water use. Profile of rice is especially evident, given its methane emissions coupled with large degree of wastage. Whereas volumes of meat wastage in the world are low, the sector produces a significant impact or effect on the environment considering carbon footprint and land occupation, particularly within high-income nations and Latin America. Additionally, fruit wastage contributes immensely to wastage of water within Asia, Europe, and Latin America, mainly due to extreme levels of wastage.
The effects of food waste with regards to the Environment
Food waste result in economic losses and harm to the natural resources which humanity depends on to feed itself. The effect of food waste is not only financial, but also environmentally. Food waste causes wasteful application of chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers; fuel used in transportation, and rotting food generates methane (one of the harmful GHGs which lead to climate change). Methane gas is twenty three times more harmful than carbon dioxide as a GHG. The vast quantity of food sent to landfills plays a significant role in global warming.
The carbon footprint for the uneaten produced food is approximated at 3.3 billion tons of GHGs: making food wastage to be ranked third emitter of green house gases after the United States of America and China. Internationally, the use of ground and surface water (blue water footprint) of food that goes into waste is approximately 250 km2, which is equal to the amount of water discharged by river Volga per year. Moreover, produced unconsumed food takes about 1.4 billion hectares of arable land; which represent about 30% of the globe’s agricultural land area.
Interaction of Food waste and the Environmental Topics
There is a link between food waste and eutrophication. Eutrophication can be described as the procedure of excessive rise of nutrients, such as nitrate and phosphate, within water body as a result of direct deposit of untreated organic waste. The nutrients serve as fertilizer causing abnormal proliferation or growth of aquatic algae. The abnormal proliferation of algae increases the population of aerobic bacteria which cause organic waste decomposition. The increase of these aerobic bacteria exhausts dissolved oxygen causing death of aquatic animals like fish. Moreover, inadequate oxygen results in decomposition which is facilitated by anaerobic bacteria. The anaerobic bacteria multiply and produce hydrogen sulfide which makes water inhabitable for other aquatic animals. The gas also produces offensive or putrid smell.
Food waste is linked to global warming. Global warming can be described as the rise in global temperature as a result of accumulation of green house gases in the atmosphere. The main GHGs causing global warming include carbon dioxide and methane. The exaggerated rise of methane and carbon dioxide within the atmosphere has been due to rotting of food waste.
Sustainable Alternatives for Managing Food Waste
High priority must be directed towards reducing food wastage as the first step. Beyond improving the crops losses on farm as a result of bad practices, more effort to balance food production with food demand would imply not utilizing natural resources in generating unneeded food.
In situations of surplus food, re-use in the human food chain is the best sustainable option. Donating surplus food to feed poor members of society or getting secondary markets represents the best alternative. If food is unfit for human use, the best alternative is to use it for feeding livestock, this conserve resource which would be utilized to generate commercial feedstuff.
In circumstances where reuse is impracticable, recycling and recovery must be pursued. Product recycling, composting, incineration, and anaerobic digestion with energy recovery enable nutrients and energy to be recuperated from food waste, instead of dumping in landfills which has negative environmental consequences.
Barriers to Alternatives for Managing Food Waste
Recycling is limited or restricted. In situations where the recycled products needs more energy, material or time than producing virgin material or product, or result in more harmful; or greater quantity by-products linked with recycling or recovery procedure, the process of recovery fails to lower the impact or effect of food waste on the environment.
Current barriers or challenges to reuse; with the current, political and social climate, increased consumer awareness or consciousness of food safety matters and, to the extreme end, the increased treat of terrorism, concerns regarding the safety of reuse as well as possibility for contamination of, for instance, plastic bottles between application or uses have restricted the successful relevance or application of reuse.
