FOOD WASTE GUIDE
How to fight food waste in the events industry A call-to-arms guide It is estimated that one third of all food produced globally is wasted. This applies to South Africa, and means that of the 31 million tonnes of food we produce annually, approximately 10 million tonnes go to waste. This is clearly a problem, but let’s explore why. By Pippa Naudé, Event Greening Forum
I
t’s a problem because an estimated 13 million South Africans experience hunger every day, while Jean Ziegler, the United Nations special rapporteur, calculated that in 2006 more than 36 million people died from hunger and illness linked to malnutrition. Meanwhile, the world’s population is expected to grow to 9.8 billion by 2050 and we need to be able to feed everyone. Better food re-distribution could go a long way to making this achievable. It’s a problem because agriculture is the single biggest consumer of fresh water, using 70 per cent (or more) of all freshwater withdrawals from rivers, lakes and aquifers. This means that wasted food is also wasted water.
14 Business Events Africa April 2020
South Africa is a water scarce country, and this kind of loss can have very real implications for our society, which Cape Town’s Day Zero scare only hinted at. It’s a problem because agriculture is responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that lost and wasted food accounts for about 4.4 gigatons of carbon dioxide each year, which is a little less than emissions from road transportation. Lastly, there is also the financial loss of wasted food to consider, which the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research estimates to be R61.5 billion a year, in South Africa alone. We really could use that money more wisely.
You may be wondering who is responsible for these losses, but there is no single culprit. Instead it happens along the entire food production chain – from pests and poor harvesting methods at production, to challenges around transportation, storage and packaging, not to mention retailers discarding food reaching its sell-by date, pervasive over catering in the food service industry, and then us at home, when we forget about the food in the back of our fridges. We all have a part to play in reducing food waste, and not least the event and hospitality industries. This is where the good news stories are, because many businesses in South Africa are already doing just that.
www.businesseventsafrica.com
