Did you know that Australia could fill an Olympic sized swimming pool 9,000 times from just food waste? The Australian economy spends an estimated $20 billion on food waste. When you go to the supermarket one of those five bags end up in the bin off to landfill, that is equal to $3,800 worth of groceries per household each year. Australia doesn’t dispose food waste responsibly all the time. Why doesn’t Australia dispose their food waste responsibly and how can these decisions impact us and how can we help the way people think/ what can we do about this.
How come Australia waste so much food in the first place. Australia overbuys on their food and don't know how to use leftover food. Also, Australia forgets about some of the food in their fridge and wait till the use by date of expiry. 20-40% of fruits and vegetables don’t even make it off the farms. Take bananas for an example, they must meet the criteria of being the right shape and size and length to be sold at supermarkets. This shows that we get rid of food for bad reason. We have 1.6 billion tons of edible food that’s wasted every year. These foods can still be eaten or sold at a supermarket. We can cook with them before they go out of date or they will be more food waste.
This food we waste impacts Australians in bad and sometimes good way. The food waste in landfill rots and gives off a methane gas, which is 21 to 25 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Australian economy pays around $20-$25 billion a year due to food waste. The good side to food waste is instead of the food waste going to landfill we can recycle, the gases are captured and converted into green energy and natural fertilizers that can be used for farming. Another way of saying this is that food waste can be a bad and good thing. However, the bad thing if you let off a dangerous gas and the good side is that you can have a good fertilizer.
What can us, Australians, do to help with food waste. There is so much we can do to help with food waste such as shop less, make a shopping list and stick to it, don’t reject ugly or weird food shapes, don’t throw away food if its ok to eat later, store food carefully so it doesn’t spoil, use your nose as well as use by dates, reduce portion size, if eating out take left overs home. There are companies that contribute to reduce food waste, like OzHarvest. OzHarvest rescues over 180 tons of food each week from over 3,500 food donors that would otherwise have gone to landfill. The reason for this is that we can limit our food wastage, then less food will go to landfill. This is important for all the reasons above.
Australians are not wasting food responsibly. They don’t think enough about how it impacts the environment and other people. If we help people understand what food waste can lead to and how to recycle probably it could help the environment. One third of the world’s food is wasted and if we all change one little aspect and keep building to improve our recycling habits, it could have a significant impact for generations to come. Also, food waste produces eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste could be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter with USA and China in front.