Erstellt am: 15. 6. 2013 - 10:10 Uhr

Food for Thought

Food waste, why it happens, why it's important to reduce it, and some ideas about how to do that. A Saturday Reality Check Special.

By Nick Schwarz and Adam Vaughan

Music plays in the open air market on Yppenplatz. Nestled in the heart of the Viennese streets, the Lange Tafel festival is in full swing. From the stage speakers music blares over the crowd while at stands vegetable curry made from reclaimed food is being served. Sophie Liebhart stands enjoying the rays of sun and blue sky on the edge of the festival, she just got her Wiener Tafel badge and is happy to be joining a group that is trying to end hunger in Vienna.

Nick Schwarz

“I started thinking about food waste a few years ago when I began dumpster diving*,” said Liebhart. She was amazed at the amount of food that supermarkets were throwing out. Not only is it a good way to eat cheaply but there is an element of vigilantism which attracts young people. Liebhart had heard of a couple students who were arrested for dumpster diving the week before.

Supermarkets in Vienna lock their dumpsters so that the food they throw away is not accessible. They say that it has to do with safety and that if someone were to get sick from the thrown away food the supermarkets would be liable. There is another factor that they won’t tell you though - discounted fruits and veggies lower profit margins so throwing them out is a just as much a business move as it is a safety concern. Products which go past their due date are thus simply thrown out and all the work that has gone into producing this food is for nothing.

EPA/JUSTIN LANE

The Wiener Tafel is an organization which teams up with food kitchens to give food that’s a bit past it another chance at finding its way onto someone’s plate. They send out crews to supermarkets and open-air food stands to gather up food that will no longer be sold. They then deliver this food to soup kitchens around the city.

Innes Petzl has been working for the Wiener Tafel for the past year. She also recognizes that, in countries like Austria, there is a need to reduce the amount of food produced. “We need to start thinking about how much food we really need,” she said. While the extra food is helpful for people who are going hungry there is much more food than can be consumed.

Dumpster diving and the work by the Wiener Tafel are movements that have helped to limit food waste but there is still a surprising amount that is lost. Dr Tim Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, estimates that in North America and Western Europe 30% to 50% of purchased food ends up being thrown away.

The United Nations projects that the world’s population will grow from its current 7 billion to 9.5 billion by the year 2050. Today around 850 million people, or or nearly 15 percent of the global population, are estimated to be undernourished. So with that many more people on the planet, we have to think about how we are going to make sure that there aren’t even more suffering from hunger.

EPA/DAI KUROKAWA

There are different problems around the world when it comes to food waste. The developing world loses a significant amount of food at the harvesting level and during transportation. Food becomes bruised which then leads to rot. Storage is another major concern in the developing world. Storage facilities are often not maintained, allowing, for example, rain to enter and cause mould, while holes allow animals to get inside and wreak havoc on the produce.

The developed world has the opposite problem. Food transportation from the fields to the stores is extremely efficient. Mechanical harvesting methods and pesticides along with fertilizers ensure most of the food we produce makes it to consumers. It is when the food gets to the market that the process could be improved. Not only does some of the food in supermarkets get thrown out before being sold, but there is also a lot that is wasted once it is in the hands of the consumer. Tim Fox says the developed world has lost its relationship with the value of food. Consumers don’t see the amount of energy, water and land use needed to put food on their shelves and in their fridges.

Fox says the retailers’ perceptions of what consumers need is another factor, leading to “a lot of marketing and sales activity that encourages consumers to over purchase… buy-one-get-one-free and half-price deals convince customers to buy more than they need. This becomes a bigger problem when that food is already close to its expiration date”.

Contracts that supermarkets have with suppliers are another cause for food loss. These contracts say that food must look flawless, with a specific colour and shape, and this leads to large scale rejections of food. 25% of the crop that is shipped to England is rejected for not being suitable cosmetically.

“For things to change there needs to be a kind of virtuous circle between consumers and politicians,” said Fox. Consumers need to demand change from their politicians who can then force supermarkets to change their practices. And if consumers DO change their habits and supermarkets DO change the way they operate, says Fox, we can go a long way towards feeding a world population of nine and a half billion.

Reality Check Special: "Food for Thought"