The Pros And Cons Of Food Waste

Nowadays, we living in the most sophisticated world with the help of technology. As technology getting better from day to day, it also give huge impact to the world food system and technology had helped us to produce a greater number of food production. We have a lot of delicious and nutritious food to eat but the problem is most of the food that we produce or buy go to waste. This unethical behavior will affect the world’s food system. According to United States Environmental Protection Agency (2013), food waste can be classified as “uneaten food and food preparation wastes” from the society either at home, restaurant or a pantry in a big company. The definition of food waste clearly state who is the biggest contributor for food waste problem

As we concerned, our food production involve many participants in food supply chain. The food supply chain begin with the collection of raw material, then processing the raw material, packaging the product, transporting the product to consumer then the product on the shelves of supermarket. Stuart (2012) in his talk share about how many oranges, bananas and potatoes wasted during the raw material collection because those fruits and vegetables did not fulfill the manufacturer and supermarket requirements and it leads to land pollution. This situation actually a good thing for the manufacturer image and consumer satisfaction but we forget about the amount of trees had been cut down for the farm and the amount of water consumed to grow the plant. This problem lead to worse environmental problem because Food Agriculture Organization (2013) state in their report, food wastage is responsible for increasing 3.3 billion tones greenhouse gases to the earth’s atmosphere and if food wastage is a country, food wastage is the third top emitter for carbon dioxide gas (CO2) after USA and China. This facts shows how big the impact of food waste to our environment. We are hurting our mother nature as food waste cause

For instance, before the food go to waste, it require a lot of money to produce the food. Based on a study carried out in Hong Kong, people in Hong Kong spend 350 billion HKD on dining out annually but 40% of the food ordered is left uneaten (Friends of the Earth, n.d.). This situation is a good example to show the cost of the food spend by the consumer and if all people in this world spend high in food it will give a positive impact to our economy. However, when we wasted the food, we will also have to spend high cost to pay operational cost of waste disposal. In United States alone, the food that go to waste worth an estimated $165 billion (Gardiner, 2014). The amount of food wasted in United States can build 35 World Trade Centre as 1 World Trade Center only cost around $3.8 billion (Brown, 2012). When our surrounding was polluted by the food waste, the government will spend a lot of money to solve this problem and this thing increase economic burden. We should make a right choice and think wisely before buying foods to avoid food waste. Food waste problem should be handle seriously as food waste increase economic