culinary food eat
Every single day, a lot of us throw away food from our own home, leftover food, unfinished meal or just an expired ingredient. At first, it seems simple “Just a scoop of rice I throw won’t matter, right?”. But the fact is food waste becomes a major issue in terms of environments. Study from UNAIR University has shown that the average amount of food waste per household per day is 318.4 grams. It means there are about 115 kg of food waste per year from one household only.
Based on UNEP Food Waste Index 2024, there are 631 million tonnes of food waste coming from households globally just per day. When you think it’s just a small amount of leftover food, the pile from all over the world could ceate a hazard. And that very problem which is currently happening start from our own kitchen.
Throwing away food is not simply wasting food, it also wasting water, time, energy, labor and many more that used to produce that food. And that’s not even the worst part, this waste are often thrown away carelessly without proper management or recycling, leading to their rotting in landfils or water, releasing methane which is even more potent than carbon dioxide. Contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, water and earth pollution and even took a big part in climate change.
They are rotting our earth. People need to understand that this issue is very serious but had been underestimated. While you throw away that rice without second thought, there’s million of people out there struggling because of limited food access. Not only food waste is a threat to our environment. This isn’t an enviromental issue that shuld be taken ligthly as the future of our living environment is also at stake.
As the young generation, we are the ones who will inherit the consequences of environmental damages, including those caused by food waste. Hunger crisis, climate changes, scarcity of clean water, air pollution and even inflation are what we gonna face in our future. As the young generation who also contributes to the waste, we also have the advantage to stop this disaster before it happens. Education, technology and information are the keys to make us the agent of changes, it’s never too late to try.
The numbers on the current food waste are overwhelming, and it’s understandable if it’s hard to believe that this issue is fixable, but in the matter of fact this problem is still solvable. Many countries had tried to lower the production of food waste as much as possible. We can take Japan as an example of a country who already lowered 31% of food waste since 2008 by creating a mandatory law to report of food waste, conducting annual surveys of households to measures food waste and implement recycling programs. There is also Netherland who had lowered 23% of the production by creating a Food Waste Free campaign.
You can come from anywhere, world wide. But you don’t have to wait for your country to move, you don’t have to wait for your teacher, you don’t have to wait for your friends. It all started from yourself. If you want, you could.
By: Cindy Angelina
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