Food Waste(d)

What is food waste?

Food waste is foods, produced for human consumption, that get lost between field and plate or get thrown away. In other words, the difference between production and consumption of foods. Non-edible parts of the food are not considered food waste, for example, eggshells, fish bones, animal bones, coffee grounds.

How is food waste caused?

Food waste can be caused in different ways and by different types of people. I will be focussing on the food waste caused by the producers on the one hand and the end consumers on the other hand.

Food waste caused by producers

We have foods that are wasted during the production phase. These are foods that never even made it to the consumer and stayed on the field because they didn't fit the requirements of the market (consumers), they didn't survive the transport from producer to the consumer or foods that were overproduced and finally foods that haven't been sold before their use-by date.

Food waste caused by consumers

However, not only producers are responsible for wasting food. We as consumers carry a large part of the foods wasted too. Food is wasted when we produce more than we eat, when the consumer chooses more food then he really wants to eat (plate waste) or when consumers purchase more than they actually need and therefore do not use the food before it goes bad.

Food waste in Switzerland

Approximately one-third of all foods in Switzerland are wasted, which corresponds to around 300 kg of food waste per person per year. Nearly half of this wasted food comes from normal households, a quarter from the food-producing industry, a sixth comes from the hospitality industry (retail and wholesale) and the rest from farmers and the agriculture industry. Breaking this down results in each and every person living in Switzerland wasting around 350 grams of food per day, which is equivalent to an average meal. The top 3 wasted foods in Switzerland are vegetables, bread and potatoes.

But why do we waste so much food in Switzerland, and in most parts of the western world?

"because we can afford it"

This is the sad truth about food waste in Switzerland and our western society. A normal average western family throws away approximately 40% of their food, due to preference, buying more than needed, cooking more than needed and throwing away due to end of the use-by date, in the third world this percentage is less than 2 %. The majority of western families spend approximately 10-15 % of their income on food, the rest is spent free-time activities, holidays and luxury, in the third world the percentage of monthly income spent on food is nearly 50%.

What are the consequences of food waste?

The number of acres used to produce all wasted foods amounts to an estimated 10 % of all available farmland in Switzerland and next to that the foods wasted in Switzerland cause just as much Co2 emissions as approximately one-third of all cars in Switzerland. The foods wasted in Switzerland actually also waste a lot of water, namely 5 to 6 full bathtubs per person per day. And finally, all Swiss citizens spend an estimated CHF 1000,- on food yearly, that never get eaten but only gets wasted.

With all foods wasted in Switzerland and the western world, we could feed all people on our planet. Knowing that at this moment 1 billion people on our planet don't have enough food to eat on a daily base, and knowing that the world population and the amount of food is still growing over proportionally, leaves us with on big question. How can we feed the world in the next 30 years if we don't start using our resources more seriously?