Some waste is inevitable, but the trouble is how much of this has been built into the manufacturing process. Marks & Spencer, for example, insists its sandwich suppliers pitch four slices of bread from each loaf they produce—the crust and the first slice at either end—amounting to 13,000 slices of fresh bread a day. Another example of systemic wastage has been dubbed “overproduction waste.” That is, manufacturers will make more of a product than supermarkets can actually sell; in the convenience-food sector (supplying ready-made meals and sandwiches) overproduction waste levels reach 56 per cent of a company’s total output, meaning that, yes, more food is being wasted than sold.
And as if diners needed any more reason to feel guilty about the grilled salmon or sushi dinner on their plates, it is the global fisheries, an industry plagued by greed, ignorance, corruption and terminal shortsightedness, that are responsible for some of the most stomach-turning examples of waste. The European Commission estimates that 40 to 60 per cent of all fish caught by European fleets are thrown back to sea because they are too small, or the wrong species (Greenpeace puts the figure even higher, suggesting that 117 million of the 186 million fish caught in U.K. waters are tossed back to sea). Indeed, the biggest waste, and source of guilt, isn’t even about the fish we actually eat: the UN Environmental Programme estimates that humans eat barely half of all fish caught. (When waste from scraps, rot, fishmeal and inedible matter are taken into account, the amount of fish-based protein actually consumed amounts to just 10 per cent of the marine animals removed annually from the oceans, according to Charles Clover, author of The End of the Line.) The world’s top marine scientists, meanwhile, continue to warn that the global fishery will collapse within 30 years if trends continue (for some species, it may be too late: the journal Nature estimates that the oceans have already lost more than 90 per cent of large predatory fishes, like cod, salmon and tuna).
Consumers do not escape blame for the mammoth waste problem: the average American throws away 96 kg of edible food each year. In Britain 58 per cent of all the carrots grown currently went in the trash. That is, Stuart says, “for every carrot you eat, you have paid for at least one more to be thrown away.” Lettuce is even worse: for every serving of fresh salad eaten in the U.K., another two have been thrown away. In all, Britons, who have had their trash examined with near-forensic precision, toss an average of 70 kg, totalling $16.5 billion, including 484 million containers of unopened yogurt, 27 apples per person and 2.6 billion slices of bread a year—enough to sate the hunger of more than 30 million people, Stuart adds.
So how did we get here? Government largesse, and the industrialization of agriculture, have brought food prices to historic lows: between 1974 and 2005, food prices on world markets fell by fully 75 per cent in real terms. Until 1952, Americans spent more than 20 per cent of their incomes on food. Last year that portion hit an all-time low of 5.6 per cent—even as the average number of calories available per person per day rose by nine per cent. (In Pakistan, by comparison, the percentage of spending on food can reach 75 per cent of income.) Waste and the amount of food available per person have risen inexorably in tandem. One British study from 1938 put food waste at two to three per cent; U.S. studies from the 1960s and ’70s put wastage levels at seven per cent. Now rich countries, which produce up to 200 per cent more food than needed to satisfy their population requirements, waste more than 25 per cent of household food (the increasing food supply and steep drop in prices are also strongly correlated with the rise in obesity: currently, two-thirds of Americans are overweight, half of those are obese, and it is believed that one-third of those born after 2000 will develop diabetes, a related condition).
Then there is the staggering cost of disposing of all of that waste food, paid for by taxes, and of leaving it to rot in landfills. Canada’s landfills are responsible for up to 38 per cent of human-made methane, a greenhouse gas. Bacteria that breaks down rotting waste produce acids that, when they make it into groundwater or nearby water bodies, can poison fish and amphibians, render water undrinkable, or enter the food chain. In cities, even recycling and composting generate greenhouse gases: they require someone to pick up waste and distribute it. And despite the significant growth of waste-diversion programs we’re still generating more and more garbage every year, says waste management expert Paul van der Werf, noting that Torontonians generated 70 kg more waste per person last year than just 10 years ago. Indeed, from 1990 to 2005, we increased our municipal waste by 24 per cent, compared to the OECD average increase of just five per cent. Currently, Canada produces 791 kg per capita of municipal waste each year, placing us dead last among the 17 OECD countries surveyed by the Conference Board of Canada.
All of which matters most when you consider the massive environmental trade-off that comes with buying a third more food than we actually eat. The environmental fallout goes far beyond the wasted food. To the discard heap, add the resources spent to grow the food: fertilizers, pesticides, oil for the tractor and for transport. In the U.S., the energy-intensive food system uses 19 per cent of fossil fuels—more than any other sector of the economy. Although experts quibble over the precise figure, modern farming is thought to contribute more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else North Americans do: 37 percent, according to one study. Factory farms have become one of the biggest sources of pollution on the continent. So when we waste from the industrial food system, we are also wasting oil, releasing greenhouse gases, polluting waterways and hastening global warming.
Even worse, many of the environmental costs of creating, then wasting, so much food—such as deforestation, water depletion and soil erosion—are being foisted on developing countries, where increasing amounts of cereals, grains and produce are being grown to sate the West’s growing appetite. When we pay Brazil to chop down the rainforest to grow soy, or have Kenya drain the Tana River delta to make sugar, we of course also hasten the never-ending extension of the agricultural frontier into the world’s last, remaining forests and wetlands.
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