A Definitive Guide to Food Waste Management for all Businesses
Food is an essential substance for the existence of all living beings. From animals to humans, we all consume food to live. But unlike most animals, humans are the ones that waste a big proportion of their food. We, humans, waste 33% of the food that is 1.3 billion tons of food every year. And on the other hand, 20 million people die each year due to hunger-related issues.
Food and Agriculture Organization says that at least 440 million people are seriously undernourished all over the globe today. The food wastes are responsible for 19-21% of all the landfill space, making it the single-largest class for landfills, that’s a lot of methane released into the air.
Ways of Reducing Food Waste
1. Realizing the Supply and Demand
Not only an average person wastes food, even businesses both the big corporations and small vendors waste food a lot. Everyone should analyze how much food they require and should buy or cook in those proportions only. Buying and cooking more than you need is the major reason for it. Corporations order a lot of groceries. A small proportion gets wasted due to poor handling of goods until it reaches their warehouses.
After that, another portion that had to begin degrading during the transportation process, went bad after being stored. Another chunk of food gets wasted when they have sold the required amount of food and they are left with leftovers that no one will buy and consume. Here one should realize the supply and demand of their food products to save money and food.
2. By Donating or Selling it
Another way of making use of the waste is by donating and selling it. Sometimes all the products that are thrown out, aren’t gone bad. One can cook a stew or soup with a small proportion of leftover vegetables and meat. The wholesale food suppliers for restaurants can implement these ideas to consume the groceries completely and make money from them.
If the food or the groceries aren’t gone bad, they can even be donated to people who have nothing or have the bare minimum. They can be donated to the poor, the homeless, orphanages, animal shelters, or dairy, pig, and poultry farms. By doing it you are doing society a favor and it will also make you feel good and help you sleep better at night. You can sell or donate the leftover meat and vegetables to the zoos where they could feed those captivated animals.
3. By Composting or Recycling it
All the biodegradable substances can be composted for various benefits, especially food. The food waste could be used to make compost pits. These then could be used in the gardens or fields to make the soil rich in several nutrients that would make the soil more fertile. This will help you save money for buying artificial fertilizers that are costly and in the long run, are very bad for the fertility and the health of the soil.
A biogas digester to produce biogas can decompose the wastes from the kitchen, human, and animal excreta. Well, Biogas can be used for cooking. This will save you some money because you won’t need to pay for cooking gas, at least not the amount you used to pay. The leftovers of this could be used in fertilizers and can be given to construction companies. Here you used every piece of money you spent on those groceries, as it either saved your money or made you some money.
4. Leftovers and Containers
Despite your use of every food product, there will be scraps left that would go to waste, the ones that were stuck to the containers. All the big corporations and vendors should try to use biodegradable disposable food containers to reduce the number of plastic footprints. These containers could be incinerated to reduce the amount of space the garbage takes. After that, it could be used for landfills or in construction businesses.
The non-biodegradable containers that come from food and wholesale soft drinks suppliers should be disposed of differently. They should be reused for different purposes like gardening, storing, or carrying stuff. Making the best out of waste should be encouraged. The garbage that remains should be recycled to make different stuff like bottles, paper, bricks, etc.
Conclusion
If every human being on this planet realizes the wastage of food and groceries and starts to take care of it, hunger problems across the globe would be solved, our cities would be less dirty; we’ll have more land for farms rather than landfills.
Reuse and recycling should be taught to children from a young age and should be taught until they are young adults to help them to understand these problems.