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A third of all food is lost or wasted. Globally, that's 1.3bn tonnes per year, enough to end hunger many times over. It's also responsible for more carbon emissions than any country besides China and America.
But what can be done and how much waste is inevitable? One often mooted solution is buying more so-called ugly food, perfectly edible produce that doesn't meet supermarkets higher aesthetic requirements. Startups like Misfits Markets, Imperfect Foods and Hungry Harvest market this ugly food to environmentally-minded eaters. But critics maintain that this produce is seldom actually wasted. More likely, it would have ended up in a pie or a soup, or been donated to a food bank.
The California-based non-profit ReFED analysed 27 ways to reduce food waste and found the most effective were solutions like education campaigns and changing packaging sizes to prevent over purchasing. Most promising of all was also perhaps the least glamorous method, standardising date labels. Confusion around sell by, best by, use by, and the best before dates accounts for around 20 per cent consumer food waste, while loosening ugly produce rules only ranked 18th out of 27. But there must be buy-in from food producers, and waste reduction doesn't always make business sense. And customers who throw out edible food usually buy even more from the grocery store.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation says that governments must step in and pressure businesses to act. Still, some win-wins exist. Improving technology for predicting food demand and tracking waste would limit over stocking, cutting both costs and waste.
Ultimately, there are no silver bullets neither businesses, governments, nor consumers can solve the problem alone. Though a zero food waste world is unlikely, tackling the issue can offer substantial financial and environmental payoffs.
