Environment – Shameful food waste

Even basic food items seem expensive. The household grocery shop takes up a significant portion of a domestic budget, yet we waste an eighth of the food we buy. We leave food until it’s too old to eat, we don’t eat everything on our plates, and we discard food because we don’t like the taste. And in wasting food, we’re wasting money. But we’re also squandering the raw materials – the energy, the labour, and the water that have gone into the production of that food. In wasting food, we’re showing disdain for everything that’s gone in to get it to our plate, and for those who don’t even have enough to eat. It’s a reflection of our consumer-based, disposable society – we buy too much food, we eat too much, and we throw away too much.

Forty-five per cent of household waste in New Zealand is food waste, mostly avoidable. Recent studies show 94 per cent of us admit we waste food, even though 79 per cent of us don’t like to do so. We waste about 29kg of food per person per annum, according to a RaboDirect report. It’s also said we underestimate how much we’re wasting and how much it costs.

All that waste leads to big, unnecessary disposal costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and general inefficiency. Some of the costs are expressed on the environment and society at large, but some are felt in our pocket. We pay for food we don’t eat and pay again for the disposal of that food.

Economy and sustainability are good reasons to try to manage food waste but another is humanity. Some of that food waste and excess, especially over Christmas, is going to be animal products. Pigs and chickens, in particular, are often trapped in terrible lives, and for those lives to be wasted because we cooked more than we ate seems especially wrong.

They live a life of suffering and then go to the landfill.

In our climate it’s challenging to keep fruit fresh. The fruit bowl seems to contain goodies that are not quite ripe one day and inedible the next. But at least we have the fridge. The key is using the leftovers that are sitting in the fridge, rather than forgetting about them and then hoping they’ll find their own way out to the compost bin.

Compost bins, worm farms and backyard chooks are other ways of dealing with the disposal costs of food waste, even if not dealing with the food waste itself. The best way to deal with lemon and orange peels is to put them under the citrus tree.

The focus on food waste in recent media has made me be more careful with what I buy and waste. Broad culture change is required as well, but even starting with me, could make 29kg of difference and save me money, too.

Christine Rose
christine.rose25@gmail.com