Food waste in the world and in Cameroon

Food waste

is Food waste the loss or disposal of food generally intended for human consumption. It occurs throughout the supply chain, from agricultural production to consumption, including storage, processing, distribution, and management. It affects all types of food: fruits and vegetables, baked goods, dairy products, meat, fish and seafood, eggs, processed foods, etc. The FAO estimates global food waste at nearly one-third of total production, representing approximately 1.3 billion tons of food lost or discarded each year.

Food waste is a global societal, social, environmental, economic, and sometimes health-related problem. The implications of this waste include food insecurity, social inequalities, aid to the most vulnerable, the optimization of agriculture, and the reduction of the environmental impact of food, particularly its climate impact. In 2019, the amount of greenhouse gases produced by food waste ranked third globally among polluting countries, behind China and the United States.

Definition

United Nations

A 2011 study by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, on behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), entitled "Food Loss and Waste at the Global Level", distinguishes between "food loss" and "food waste", and offers definitions:

• Food loss measures the decrease in edible biomass (excluding inedible parts and seeds) throughout the portion of the supply chain specifically dedicated to food for human consumption; that is, losses during production, post-harvest, and processing stages. This definition of loss includes biomass initially intended for human consumption but ultimately used for other purposes, such as fuel or animal feed.
• Food waste is the loss of food that occurs during the retail and final consumption phases due to the behavior of retailers and consumers – which is to throw food away as waste.

European Union

The European Union initially defined food waste in a directive from 1975 until 2000 as "any food substance, raw or cooked, which is discarded, intended to be discarded, or needs to be discarded." This directive was replaced by Directive 2008/98/EC, which does not contain a specific definition. Directive 75/442/EEC, which did contain this definition, was amended in 1991 (91/156) with the addition of waste categories (Annex 1)

UNITED STATES

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has defined food waste at the federal level as uneaten food and waste generated during food preparation by commercial and food service establishments such as grocery stores, restaurants, food stands, and institutional cafeterias. Each state remains free to define food waste differently, but many have chosen not to.

Main causes

Production

Food production (agriculture, livestock farming, fishing, aquaculture, etc.) is responsible for the largest share of food loss. Approximately 54% of food waste occurs during production, harvesting, handling, and storage. Agriculture is the activity that causes the most waste, accounting for 33% of the total. Large-scale agriculture (industrial and commercial) causes more food loss than subsistence farming. Losses vary from region to region worldwide. In less developed countries, such as those in Africa and some Asian countries, losses due to handling and storage represent a larger proportion.

Losses during production can be caused by, among other things:

• Diseases or contamination of crops;
• Predators, insect pests,...;
• Climatic conditions (drought, storm, etc.);
• Use of agricultural machinery;
• Premature harvest or overripe;
• Improper handling and storage;
• Unharvested food (excess production, inadequate appearance, etc.);
• Workforce.

Part of the waste at the production level is linked to exceeding quotas (agriculture, fishing), to standards that must be met (minimum product sizes, quality and appearance standards, etc.), or to price thresholds below which products are not sold. Surplus production and non-compliant food are often thrown away.

• Regarding fishing, trawlers estimate that only 30 to 40% of the total catch is released back into the sea. This means that seven million tons of fish are discarded into the ocean each year, representing slightly less than 10% of the total catch.
• Farmers, for their part, often harvest selectively, preferring to leave crops that do not meet standards in the field (where they can be used as fertilizer or animal feed), insofar as the food would be discarded later in the chain.

Transformation

Industrial processing aims to obtain products that meet certain criteria of hygiene, taste, quality, and visual uniformity. Therefore, some products are rejected during the process.

Distribution and retail

Inventory of products in a supermarket in Thailand.

Some products may be excluded from sale by distributors according to various criteria of hygiene, visual quality, or commitment to the consumer (selling fresh products, and removing them from the shelves a few days before the use-by date, or DLC).

Consumption[edit | edit source]

Some Western households throw away unsold food before its 'use by' date because they buy more than they need (overstocking the refrigerator for fear of running out), or they throw it away once the 'best before' date has passed, due to a lack of understanding of the difference between the two types of dates. This lack of understanding is responsible for 20%^of food waste in French households, according to the European Commission. In fact, a product can generally be consumed beyond its 'best before' date without risk to human health. This is even the case for some products a few days after the 'use by' date (as was the case in France in 2012), provided the cold chain has been maintained.

Others throw away leftover meals that can still be eaten, reheated or reused in new preparations.

Overall estimates

The FAO estimates that approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year, or one third of the food produced for human consumption, is lost or wasted.

Distribution of food waste worldwide, per year and per person

Figures are presented in the overall 2011 study¹⁷ :

Waste by country

Canada

In Canada, annual food waste is estimated at 35.5 million tonnes, representing 58% of production. This amount includes unavoidable waste such as bones and eggshells, as well as preventable waste. Approximately 11.2 million tonnes, or 32% of the losses, could be avoided. The financial value of preventable food waste is estimated at $49.5 billion annually. This amount represented nearly 3% of Canada's GDP in 2016. It also represents 52% of the amount Canadians spend on food in stores.

The National Zero Waste Council estimated in 2017 that 63% of Canadians' food waste could have been avoided. Canadians throw away 2.2 million tonnes of food annually, or 140 kg per household. This amount represents a financial loss of $17 billion, equivalent to $1,100 per household.

United States[edit | edit source]

In the United States, 40% of available food is thrown away.

France[edit | edit source]

The average French person wastes between 20 and 30 kg of food per year, 7 kg of which is still in its packaging. In total, in 2015, annual food waste across the entire food chain was estimated at 150 kg per person, compared to an average of 190 kg in Europe. This amount represents annual financial losses of nearly €160 per person.

Food waste also comes from commercial catering (approximately 230g per individual meal) and institutional catering (approximately 167g per individual meal, particularly in hospitals). In school cafeterias, nearly 30% of the food on plates ends up in the trash. Between 10,000 and 13,000 tons of fish are estimated to go unsold in France. Only 10% is donated to food banks; the rest is partly processed into animal feed and partly destroyed by the addition of inedible materials.

The losses are estimated at around 10 million tonnes of food thrown away or lost annually in France, which represents between 12 and 20 billion euros in financial value.

United Kingdom[edit | edit source]

Detailed article: Food waste in the United Kingdom.

The British throw away 40 kg of food, or 25% of the food bought by households.

Switzerland[edit | edit source]

In Switzerland, according to the Federal Office for the Environment, 2.6 million tonnes of food waste are produced each year (agriculture, industry, commerce, catering and households); this food waste is disposed of in the following ways: 48% composting or methanization, 31% animal feed, 21% incineration and only 1% donations to associations.

Case of Cameroon

According to the National Institute of Statistics (INS), approximately 9.9% of Cameroonians were living in famine in 2017, compared to 15.4% in 2014. Notwithstanding these few remarkable advances, the situation remains worrying.

Surprisingly, figures from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER) reveal that every second in 2016, during sales to individuals or consumers themselves, approximately 66 tons of food either ended up in the trash or were recycled into animal feed. This represents a daily waste of 6 to 11 kg of food per person.

Overall, according to the Africa SDG index, hunger indicators are orange and the situation remains serious according to IFPRI.

Cameroon faces new challenges that are impacting the hunger crisis. These new challenges include the security crises in the Far North and the Anglophone regions, as well as the socio-health crisis.

Other countries

In developing countries, waste is more prevalent upstream in the agri-food sector: losses are estimated to reach between 10% and 60% of harvests, depending on the agricultural products.

Consequences

Economical

Food waste has significant economic consequences. It generates financial losses for producers, retailers, and consumers. For example, in 2009, it represented nearly €530 per household annually in the UK, while in Canada, the figure reached $1,100 per year.

Environmental

The environmental impacts of food waste include:

• Water waste: for agriculture and processing;
• Waste of energy;
• Soil and water pollution: use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in fields;
• Loss of biodiversity;
• Deforestation;
• Unnecessary land occupation;
• Increase in greenhouse gas emissions (agricultural machinery, processing, transport, decomposition, waste management, etc.);
• Increase in the amount of waste.

The area used for food production that is not consumed is estimated at 1.4 billion hectares (in 2007), covering an area equivalent to the second largest country after Russia and larger than Canada. This area represents 28% of the world's agricultural land. To this must be added the space used for disposing of discarded food (landfills, composting facilities, etc.).

The environmental impact of discarded food varies depending on the disposal method. Organic matter sent to landfills decomposes under anaerobic conditions (absence of oxygen), resulting in the emission of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Recovering organic matter, for example through composting and biomethanization techniques, helps to reduce these impacts.

Social

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Reducing food waste

Consumers

Consumers can reduce their food waste by adopting good food management practices:

• Plan meals;
• Take inventory of the fridge and pantry;
• Plan purchases and limit them to the essentials;
• Use appropriate preservation methods: refrigeration, freezing, canning, dehydration, lacto-fermentation, etc.;
• Prepare adequate portions of food (batch cooking);
• Cooking with food that is almost expired;
• Use parts of food that are usually thrown away, such as tops, peels, etc., in different recipes;
• Donate your surplus food.

Policies

Several countries have adopted policies or strategies to reduce food waste. The United Nations (UN) has also integrated the fight against food waste into its Sustainable Development Goals, specifically goals 2 and 12.

European Union

On January 19, 2012, the European Parliament adopted a resolution aimed at preventing food waste and designated 2014 as the "European Year Against Food Waste." On November 20, 2009, a ban on high grading (discarding fish for commercial purposes) was incorporated into European regulations. A study conducted for the European Commission on avoidable and unavoidable food waste concluded that it amounts to 140 kg per capita ("excluding production waste and by-products not considered waste").

France

According to the Food Sustainability Index, France receives the highest score in the application of policies to combat food waste.

In 2012, the French government adopted the European Parliament's commitment to halve food waste by 2025, through five actions targeting large retailers, manufacturers, associations, and consumers. Numerous local initiatives were then highlighted, such as RÉGAL (Network to Avoid Food Waste), which helps stakeholders in the food industry to meet, exchange ideas, and take action.

A report from the parliamentary mission on combating food waste reiterates that the issues are simultaneously ethical, economic, and environmental. This report, overseen by Guillaume Garot (Member of Parliament and former Minister Delegate for Agri-Food), proposes a national policy aimed at changing the behavior of consumers, large retailers, manufacturers and other producers, and the food service industry (both commercial and institutional). It develops three themes: empowering everyone, strengthening public policy tools, and a new development model, while also calling for European and international action (including the proposal for an ad hoc and the inclusion of this issue in the COP21 negotiations). It recommends the creation of a dedicated national agency and proposes making it mandatory to donate unsold food to charities, enshrining in law a ban on discarding edible food, and extending tax breaks to processed products. It also proposes to clarify the existing law (a penal circular could encourage leniency "towards a person who recovers food without causing harm to the owners could illustrate this progress"), to promote doggy bags and to remove logistical obstacles.

In August 2015, the Minister of the Environment, in addition to the efforts required by the Energy Transition Law, invited major corporations and committed large retailers to combat food waste (a loss of approximately 12 to 20 billion euros per year), this "unbearable scourge." Auchan, Carrefour, and Casino (including their Géant, Franprix, Monoprix, and Leader Price brands) announced even before the meeting that they would sign the "commitment agreement" proposed by the Minister; for the Minister, this meant "a ban on destroying food stocks, for example by bleaching them, and an obligation to donate food stocks to charities.".

Legislation : A law to combat food waste was adopted on February 3, 2016. The obligation to donate food was analyzed by charities as a risk, since they did not necessarily have the human and logistical resources to sort, store, and redistribute this food, potentially turning them into waste collectors. The law adopted in February 2016 requires businesses reaching a size threshold of 400 square meters to offer donation agreements to approved charities. The law penalizes distributors with a fine of €3,750 if they render unsold but still edible food unfit for consumption.

In 2017, the law's impact made it possible to provide 10 million meals to the most vulnerable. Furthermore, 5,000 new state-recognized charities are now authorized to distribute unsold food at store closing time.

In 2018, strengthening the fight against food waste became central to the third pillar of the law "for balanced trade relations in the agricultural sector and healthy and sustainable food," passed on October 2, 2018, by the National Assembly. The objective was to extend the scope of the law on combating food waste to institutional catering and the agri-food industry, which will also be required to offer their unsold goods for food donation.

In 2020, the law of February 10, 2020 relating to the fight against waste and the circular economy, or AGEC law, was published, supplemented by an order of July 29, 2020 relating to the prevention and management of waste.

Training : This is one of the keys to changing behaviors. In March 2018, a six-week MOOC (free online course open to all) was launched by the AgroParisTech Foundation and Auchan Retail France, with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, the DRAAF Île-de-France (Regional Directorate for Food, Agriculture and Forestry), ADEMA (French Agency for Ecological Transition), INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research), and the association "From My Plate to Our Planet." This MOOC aims to "raise awareness and support widespread change in habits." It will cover current issues, best practices, the need for behavioral changes, feedback from experience, and more, in order to contribute to the goal of halving (between 2013 and 2025) the ten million tons of food waste produced in France each year.

Swiss

In Switzerland, waste management is regulated by the Ordinance on the Limitation and Disposal of Waste. According to Article 14, biowaste must be recovered or methanized (which prohibits any practice aimed at rendering unsold goods unfit for consumption or composting).

Private initiatives

A meal preparation company launched the International Day Against Food Waste in 2017. This event takes place during the last week of April. Several countries have adopted this initiative.

Sources: Wikipedia and cameroun-muntunews.com

 

Many impoverished people in Cameroon go days without food. Avoid throwing away food or drinks that are still usable and give them to those in need.

The Promoter.