Food Waste Worsens Greenhouse Gas Emissions: FAO
(http://www.climatecentral.org/news/food-waste-worsens-greenhouse-gas-emissions-fao-16498?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter) (07.10.2013)
LONDON The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates
the direct cost to producers of food that goes to waste is currently
$750 billion annually, a figure that excludes wasted fish and seafood.
But the FAO says the waste not only
causes huge economic losses but is also doing very significant damage
to natural resources climate, water, land and biodiversity.
Without accounting
for greenhouse gas emissions from land use change, the carbon
footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 billion tons.
Credit: Taz/Wikimedia Commons via Climate News Network.
It says its report, Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on
Natural Resources, is the first study to analyze the
impacts of global food waste from an environmental perspective.
The authors say: Without accounting
for greenhouse gas emissions from land use change, the carbon
footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 Gigatons [billion
tons] of CO2 equivalent: as such, food wastage ranks as the third top emitter
after the USA and China.
Globally, the blue water footprint
(i.e., the consumption of surface and groundwater resources) of food wastage is
about 250 cubic kilometers, which is equivalent to the annual water discharge
of the Volga river [in Russia], or three times the volume of [Switzerland’s]
Lake Geneva.
Finally, produced but uneaten food
vainly occupies almost 1.4 billion hectares of land; this represents close to
30 percent of the worlds agricultural land area.
We simply cannot allow one-third of
all the food we produce to go to waste or be lost because of inappropriate
practices, when 870 million people go hungry every day, said the FAOs
director-general, José Graziano da Silva.
The FAO has also published a
comprehensive tool-kit as a companion to the study; it contains
recommendations on how to reduce food loss and waste along the food chain, and
details projects around the world that are seeking to tackle the problem.
The FAO and the UN Environment Program are
founding partners of the Think
Eat Save Reduce Your Foodprint campaign,
which was launched earlier this year and which aims to help to co-ordinate
worldwide efforts to cut wastage.
The study says 54 percent of
global food wastage occurs during production, post-harvest handling and
storage, and 46 percent at the processing, distribution and consumption stages.
As a general trend, developing
countries suffer more food losses during the production stages, while food
waste at the retail and consumer level tends to be higher in middle and
high-income regions.
The report says that the later a
food product is lost along the chain, the greater the environmental
consequences, since the environmental costs incurred during processing,
transport, storage and cooking must be added to the initial production costs.
Credit: Biocycle.net
The report says that the later a
food product is lost along the chain, the greater the environmental
consequences, since the environmental costs incurred during
processing, transport, storage and cooking must be added to the initial
production costs.
Meat production has a
substantial impact on the environment in terms of land occupation and carbon
footprint, especially in high-income countries and in Latin America, which
together account for 80 percent of all meat wastage. Apart from Latin America,
it is high-income regions which are responsible for about 67 percent of all
wasted meat.
Fruit wastage contributes
significantly to water waste in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, and large
volumes of vegetable wastage in industrialized parts of Asia and Europe mean a
large carbon footprint for the sector.
Wastage of cereals is a significant
problem in Asia, affecting carbon emissions as well as water and land use. Rice
is a particular problem: paddy fields account for around 20 percent of
human-related emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and a significant
amount of rice is wasted.
Uneaten food that ends up rotting in
landfills is also a large producer of methane, although there is another use to
be made of it which can offer worthwhile returns. A British company is
among those who are profiting by exploiting them.
Alex Kirby, a former BBC environment
correspondent, is a founding journalist of Climate
News Network. Climate News Network is a news service led by four veteran British
environmental reporters and broadcasters. It delivers news and commentary about
climate change for free to media outlets worldwide.