A couple of months ago, in my blogpost on ammonia, I mentioned how, perhaps naïvely, we could stop using ammonia-based fertilisers; though with an increasing population, this could be rather difficult.
A reader pointed out that I might not have been as naïve as I thought I was, citing the impact of global food waste. So this is what this blogpost is about. I will admit that I'm trying to reduce my food waste, and I am certainly not a saint on this matter - however, I do agree that it is a concerning problem.
This blogpost focuses on the UK.
Food waste comes in many forms. There's the food you started eating before deciding you didn't want any more of it; there's the expired food which is now unsafe for consumption; and there's the food which was never safe in the first place because it was contaminated. One way or another, ingredients would have been wasted and which will end up either decomposing in the ground or will end up in landfill. The latter option is especially harmful as methane gas will be released as the food decomposes through anaerobic respiration, which contributes to global warming and thus climate change through the release of carbon dioxide.
There are also many other ways how food could go to waste - supermarkets may buy more food than is in demand, such as if it's bought out of season (strawberries for example are grown in the UK during summer and are most commonly consumed then - otherwise, strawberries are less in demand, and are shipped from areas such as Almería in Spain). If too few people buy this food, it has to be thrown away. An obvious fix is to grow food in season, but people really like strawberries.
Overall, it's estimated that a third of all food produced globally goes to waste - about a billion tonnes worth. That is certainly a lot, but would consuming that food ensure fertilisers wouldn't ever be necessary?
Obviously, it's good to break down that statistic into proportions - how much is wasted by choice compared to safety reasons?
Supermarkets and Food Waste
In the UK alone, about 9.5 million tonnes of food is wasted annually, with 70% from households alone - that's about 6.6 million tonnes. In contrast, a combined 20% comes from manufacturers and retail services such as supermarkets. Companies such as Tesco like proving how their food waste is declining, with data from 2022/23 (page 6) claiming the total unsold food, food surplus and food waste is at about 250,000 tonnes, out of nearly 15,000,000 tonnes of handled food. What's interesting, however, is that whilst Tesco have cut down on food waste, nearly halving since 2016/17, their food surplus has actually more than doubled in the past seven years - clearly fewer people are buying certain types of food, perhaps due to reasons such as the ongoing cost of living crisis, as well as the impacts of conflict and the recent Covid-19 pandemic. In fairness, (page 2) Tesco claim to redistribute most of this food to local food banks and charities, with the remainder used as animal feed - all in all, about 88% of all food surplus. Meanwhile, the supermarket Aldi recently announced that it met its target to cut food waste by 57% six years early, and this shows that supermarkets are at least trying to put in an effort, and at least it's not just meaningless words.
Yet at the end of the day, food waste remains a prevalent issue, one that should be reported on more frequently. In 2020, The Grocer reported that supermarkets throw away 100,000 tonnes of food annually, equivalent to about 30 million meals, all while food poverty remains an evermore pressing issue in the UK. Admittedly, this could have been due to the effects of a lockdown, but that shouldn't dilute the issue. One potential idea could be to tax retailers for food waste, something that's not in place right now (and , yet no progress on such legislation has happened in the UK - all I found was a two-year old petition with a fraction of the required signatures and is now closed. So unless something changes, food will continue to be wasted. And the cynic in me suspects they might not even pay that tax.
And not even the government will monitor food waste as much as they used to (article here).
Imperfect Food Boxes and Solutions
Here's a solution that's simple to market.
One thing I've seen in Sainsbury's is a series of food boxes containing misshapen food. This would have otherwise likely either not made it to the shop, instead being wasted, or wouldn't have been bought because it didn't look perfect, thus also being wasted. Just fifteen years ago, this kind of scheme wouldn't have been permitted by the EU due to regulations on the sales of "wonky" fruit and vegetables. (I love how the article has a quote claiming a "new dawn for the curvy cucumber".) However, I don't remember the last time I saw one of these boxes, and the Sainsbury's website doesn't promote their "Imperfectly Tasty" range - so either they're not selling them right now or their marketing isn't good. If the former, it might just show how there remains a dislike towards knobbly carrots which don't look right - and when there've been stringent regulations about how food can be sold, it's not too surprising this is the case. Tesco ran a similar scheme - "Perfectly Imperfect" - which launched in 2016 and is claimed to have stopped fifty million packs of fruit and vegetables from going to waste - and you can buy imperfect frozen mixed berries from their website to this day (and only that).
I suppose the flaw with this is the name of the branding - it's imperfect, and regardless of what one might say, why would the public want to buy something that is advertised as imperfect? Most consumers would want the highest quality produce, after all, and selling imperfect produce goes against what they would desire. Surely calling it produce like all the other non-curvy cucumbers would be fine?
Another solution would be to donate this food to food banks and shelters, which supermarkets already encourage one to to. The idea is that you buy some food and place it in a large box, which can then be given to other people. This solution is obviously dependent on the buyer, not the shop, and only works if people believe they should - and I think the process should be between the supermarket and food bank anyways (and as mentioned earlier, this is the case with the food surplus, and Tesco and Morrisons already do this).
Epilogue
When I was researching the NH3 blogpost, almost all articles mentioned how we should shift to using organic fertilisers. Indeed, fertilisers play a very important role in food production, especially when the soil cannot otherwise sustain crop growth due to limited nitrogen, for instance. A solution could be to only use fertiliser when needed, or to use alternative fertilisers such as compost.
As mentioned earlier, most food waste comes from households, and there has been an increase in food surplus at certain supermarkets. So perhaps buying less and eating what you already have could work. However, should the food still be stocked in shops and not sold, the issue continues.
So perhaps less food should be imported from other countries, so less food is to be wasted. But that topic would require another thousand words, and maybe I'll write about it in a different blogpost. And either way, it's up to the supermarkets to do that.
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