Wasting Food by the Billions |
Posted: November 19, 2014 |
With so many terms used in grocery stores to describe the state of their food, it can be confusing to know when it’s safe to eat food, and when you need to throw it away. This is but one factor that could explain the crisis in Australia around food waste. Did you know Australians throw out over $8 billion worth of food every year according to LunchALot.com? That’s the equivalent of $1036 per average household every single year! Below we’ll look at some steps to prevent this and help change direction! Stores Throw Out Tons of Produce and Perishables Business Insider released an excellent article discussing the issues with waste in the current supermarket business model. After sending a team out to take pictures of edible items that were found in the dumpster behind a Trader Joe’s in the United States, they interviewed the company’s former President, Doug Rauch. After discussing the extensive amount of waste noticed in the store’s business practices, his response was: "The reality as a regional grocery manager is, if you see a store that has really low waste in its perishables, you are worried. If a store has low waste numbers, it can be a sign that they aren’t fully in stock and that the customer experience is suffering.” Donating Food to the Homeless and Disadvantaged In order to keep fresh, good looking food and produce on the shelves, the store needs to order more than what they actually plan to sell. This excess is then thrown out once it becomes either visually unappealing, or past it’s peak freshness date. The business practice clearly pays big in terms of customer loyalty and shopping practices, but it’s incredibly wasteful. Thankfully, organizations are stepping in to find uses for the edible food that’s being tossed in the garbage everyday. Before it makes its way to the dumpster, organization are coordinating with grocery chains, both big and small, to accept the discarded foods as a donation. To be clear, these are completely safe to eat, non-expired items that are simply being tossed aside due to a “sell by date” or cosmetic damage. If we work together to capture all of this waste, we could feed every average household in Australia for more than a month. Perishable Food Classifications There are four common terms used to describe the date by which corporate would like the grocery store to sell their food. These include “expiration date”, “sell-by date”, “use-by date”, and “best-by dates” according to Business Insider. All of these terms, or classifications mean basically the same thing: this is the best guess of the item’s peak freshness. Therefore, grocery stores remove the item from their shelves before this date in order to keep consumers from feeling that they are selling old or outdated product.
This not only affects the grocery stores, but home consumption as well. Most Australian homes buy more food than they need, and throw it out once the date has passed on the sticker, or it goes bad due to a lack of good food planning. With better planning and a willingness to get over “sticker shock”, we can all do our part to become part of the solution. An Issue of Atmospheric Proportions The other problem wrought by excess food waste is a bi-product of the food rotting in landfills and trash heaps. As produce and other foods rot, they expel a gas called methane. According to LunchALot.com, this gas is twenty-five times more harmful to the environment than the carbon emissions from your vehicle everyday. TWENTY-FIVE TIMES! So not only are people going hungry, but people around the world are struggling to cope with additional issues related to greenhouse gases. All this because we buy too much food, and have a food supply system that creates built in waste in order to maintain marketshare? There’s a better way to do this! Let’s all pledge to work together to eat at home when we have food in the fridge. We can double check the pantry before heading to the store, and plan out our meals ahead of time. Plus, you’ll be putting extra cash back in your pocket as you save on food expenses! Say it with me: it’s a win-win!
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