Every year we lose 1,3 billion tons of food, with damage that is around 750 billion dollars. How? One third of the food produced is thrown away. And this, in addition to being an affront to those who died of malnutrition in 2013, is also harmful to the planet. The alarm was raised by the FAO
Don't store avocado like this: it's dangerous
We lose every year 1,3 billions of tons of food, with a damage that is around 750 billion dollars. How? One third of the food produced is thrown away. And this, in addition to being an affront to those who died of malnutrition in 2013, is also harmful to the planet. It was there to sound the alarm Fao.
In his report "Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources"(The ecological footprint of food waste: the impact on natural resources), the organization highlighted the absurdity linked to waste at the table that not only causes severe economic losses but they inflict significant damage to the environment, exhausting the natural resources that humanity relies on to feed itself.
In particular, the study focused on analyzing the consequences of waste for the climate, water, land and biodiversity. To give an idea, every year the food that is produced but not eaten dries up a volume of water equivalent to the annual flow of the Russian Volga River and is responsible for adding others 3,3 billion tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Not to mention the economic consequences, amounting to 750 billion dollars a year.
Last year, the FAO calculated that only food waste could feed the whole of Africa.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), however, explained that this bad habit could turn into an opportunity, if it were possible to reverse the course: "UNEP and FAO have identified food waste - the loss and waste of food - as a great opportunities for economies around the world ". Basically, avoiding waste in the family, in the schools, in restaurants, in businesses but also in Retail it would in itself already produce wealth, both economic and environmental, in the latter case reducing CO2 emissions.
"All of us - farmers and fishermen, food producers and supermarkets, local and national governments, individual consumers - must make changes in every link of the human food chain to avoid food waste, in the first place, and for reuse and recycling when you can't ", he said the FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva. "We cannot allow a third of all the food we produce to end up in waste or be lost due to inappropriate practices, when 870 million people go hungry every day," she added.
Is it possible to change, shall we start immediately?
Francesca Mancuso
READ also:
- Food waste: for FAO they could feed the whole of Africa
- Food waste: half of the food produced ends up in waste
- Practical advice to reduce food waste starting with the weekly shopping
