Food Waste and the Climate Change. What are the Implications.
Food waste is becoming an increasingly significant global issue due to its economic, social and environmental implications.
In addition, food waste relates to climate change since food originates from agriculture and ends up as waste while energy is consumed during its life cycle stages.
It is estimated that one-third of all the food produced in the world goes to waste. The United Nation (UN) approximately 1.3 billion tons of fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, seafood, and grains that either never leave the farm, get lost or spoiled during distribution.
This could be enough calories to feed every undernourished person on the planet.
The world body warns that our food habits contribute to global warming, a phenomenon that is threatening to cause serious harm to the planet. The food waste alone causes 10 percent of greenhouse gases and unless we change our diet, we will not reverse the situation.
According to Data from the lntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), loss and waste of food caused between 8 and 10 percent of the emissions of the gases responsible for global warming in the period 2010-2016.
We have made the Earth into a bottomless larder out of which we very often eat more than we need and experts warns this imbalance, together with an unsustainable production model, poses a threat to our health and to that of the planet, which is subject to unprecedented food stress.
As the world’s population continues to grow, our challenge should not be how to grow more food, but to feed more people while wasting less of what we already produce.
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