By Yin Nwe Ko
A FEW days ago, I heard the population of the world turned to eight billion meaning there were eight billion mouths to be fed by the earth every day. This information might be frightened the intellects who are worrying about the food problems across the world. There might be so many questions that could not be solved instantly. I am not an intellect who can consider such a problem widely but there is just a solution within my reach. It is nothing but a kitchen that every household possesses. The readers also possess a kitchen certainly, I think. I have a query to ask you all “Don’t you all encounter any waste of food in your kitchens daily?” If so, you can prohibit it less and less in some ways as much as you can. This is the solution to the query that is given by a non-intellect like me. However, the intellect will explain to my readers the abundant and interesting facts here.
Approximately 9.5 million tonnes of food waste were produced in the UK in 2018, of which, 6.4 million tonnes - roughly 15 billion meals - could have been eaten. In the same year, the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), the charity that uncovered those figures, and the Institute of Grocery (IGD), launched the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, a series of milestones for retailers, producers, and hospitality and food service businesses to reduce food waste.
Among the 261 signatories to the roadmap is bakery chain Greggs, a company that has pledged to put an end to food waste and, by 2025, aims to create 25 per cent less waste than in 2018. Ways of achieving this include the company’s use of a highly efficient forecasting and ordering system, offering food donations to organizations through its grant-making charity the Greggs Foundation, and opening up more Greggs Outlet shops in areas of social deprivation, where day-old products are offered at bargain prices.
It’s also one of 21,579 UK businesses partnering with Too Good to Go, the mobile phone app that connects customers, to cafes, restaurants, and shops with unsold food surplus. Over the course of 2021, Too Good to Go helped Greggs save more than 810 tonnes of food from going to waste.
The app is very easy to use and can be downloaded to a mobile phone from Google Play or Apple’s App Store. Once installed, users simply search for outlets within 3-30 kilometres of a selected area and, if available, are presented with a list of “Magic Bags in your area”. Most of the Magic Bags are priced around £3 to £4 and offer three times the value in food that is still edible, yet approaching its best before or use-by date.
Depending on where one is searching, the outlets include supermarkets, butchers, takeaways, coffee shops, hotels, and pubs. He does not know what he is going to get until he collects his Magic Bag but it is possible to pick up a selection of hot and cold breakfast items from a hotel at the end of morning service, cooked meats from a carvery on a Sunday afternoon, and even a few pints of ale or lager from a pub that’s had to change an almost empty barrel ahead of the peak-time rush.
If one spots a Magic Bag that he fancies, he clicks on it, selects the quantity required – if more than one bag is available – and pays for his order with Google Pay, PayPal, or a credit or debit card. Depending on the outlet, he might find that the Magic Bags are snapped up straight away but there are other times when it’s possible to order a “last chance” item shortly before the designated collection time. If he discovers that he is unable to collect his Magic Bag, he can cancel it two hours before the collection time, giving someone else the chance to order it.
The first Magic Bag the writer ordered was from Greggs. Turning up at the designated collection time of 5 pm, as the store was closing, he was met by one of the staff who asked to see the order on his phone. After swiping the screen to mark the order as “collected” he was presented with a paper bag containing two baguettes, a sausage roll, and four cookies.
For an investment of just £2.95, the writer was walking away with £10.90 worth of food, which was certainly not going to go to waste that evening.
One Sunday evening, the writer picked up a Magic Bag from his local Co-op Food Store. For £4, he was given a box containing two bread rolls, two Belgian buns, two maple pecan plaits, a punnet of plums, a box of chicken poppers, an all-day breakfast sandwich, and a 1.5 kilogrammes bag of Maris Piper potatoes. All was enjoyed over the following day, except the potatoes that were still in good shape when he cooked with them the following Sunday.
For £6, two Magic Bags ordered from Costa Coffee offered just over £20 worth of food, including two Vegan Bac’n Breakfast Baps, four slices of rocky road, two almond croissants, and a teacake. So impressed with this haul, he ordered another two Magic Bags a week later.
It is the luck of the draw as to what one is going to get, as this time both bags contained a Vegan Bac’n Breakfast Bap, a British pork sausage bap, and the Ultimate Breakfast Wrap -- containing smoked bacon, Cumberland sausage, and free-range egg. Luckily, there was room in the freezer for the writer’s bounty, and he didn’t have to eat cereals for the best part of a week.
As we enter the second wave of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, the strength of our food supply chains is being put to the test. Again. How many of us, perhaps for the first time, have had to carefully budget food for a period of several months? The pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of all those along the food supply chain, from farmers to processors and households.
This opens a window of opportunity to shift our food system to a more resilient, sustainable, and circular path. One where food loss and waste are designed out, food by-products are transformed and used at their highest value, and food production improves rather than damages the environment.
This shift is urgent. Cities will be home to 66 per cent of the global population and consume over 80 per cent of the world’s food by 2050. In the meantime, one-third of the food produced for human consumption is being lost or wasted, the equivalent of 1.3 billion tonnes per year. This waste does not include the land, water, and energy that went into producing it. And yet cities hold the key to unlocking the potential to not only satisfy this increased demand but also improve livelihoods, citizens’ health, and the natural environment.
There are several high-dividend actions that countries can take under the Paris Agreement to fight food loss and waste through circular action. Here, we would like to share some ideas.
Cities can increase their resilience to external shocks and help strengthen food security by relying on a mix of local, regional and global producers. Shorter food supply chains help reduce unnecessary food loss due to storage and transportation inefficiencies, not to mention the associated distribution costs and emissions and excess plastic packaging. People will benefit as well. Locally sourced, fresh, and nutritious food will help contribute to healthy diets and well-being. Many of the world’s major cities are already trying to improve their urban food systems under the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, an international pact covering 210 cities and more than 450 million people.
Cities can be advocates and enablers, making vacant cityowned lots available for farm leases, passing zoning laws, and launching programmes to promote urban agriculture. Paris and Singapore have launched initiatives to take advantage of rooftops for food production and include urban farms in new developments. In poorer countries, the agricultural heritage of many rural-urban migrants is helping cities improve food security. In Lusaka, over half of urban residents grow their food, while in Kampala and Yaoundé many urban households raise livestock, including poultry, dairy cattle, and pigs. However, in many countries in Africa urban agriculture is not part of official urban planning policies, and land tenure remains a major challenge.
Food loss and waste, which the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates is costing US$1 trillion every year has the potential to create new income streams for local governments and businesses. A part of this economic loss could be recaptured by converting waste into sustainable agricultural, natural fertilizers, or other high-value products. Several cities in the United States pulverize food scraps through in-sink garbage disposals, then turn the slurry into fertilizers and biogas to power buses and water treatment facilities. Sweet Benin, an innovative example from Benin, is working with Techno Serve to turn waste from cashew harvests into a new beverage industry and help cashew farmers supplement their off-season incomes. This large waste stream can be upcycled into safe, tasty, and healthy products and ingredients that can work at large-scale distribution.
Better data can help us understand our food’s journey or “waste” streams to determine how they can be captured and upcycled into other value-generating processes. During the pandemic, many cities, including those in China, shifted to online marketplaces to connect small farmers with consumers, and to distribute food as the traditional distribution tracks shut down. Tools such as the Food Loss and Waste Value Calculator can also help cities track how their efforts to prevent food loss and waste provide nutritional and environmental value.
The current intersection of ongoing crises; public health, climate, and economy, provide us with an incentive to seek transformational change. This is an opportunity that should not be missed. Our current food system is no longer fit for the society and planetary needs of the 21st century. It is ripe for disruption and cities can lead the way.
To summarize my account, I have already informed you of one of the ways to support sufficient food for eight billion mouths across the world.
Reference:
-Best of British (Aug 2022)
-UNDP Report (Nov 2020)
