Rian Hurford

Reducing Food Waste Will Prevent The Demise of Our Planet

Wasting food, a recurring and increasing problem all across society, is going to cause the end of our planet. By reducing food waste, we will improve the health of our planet immensely. Food waste contributes to ⅓ of our global resource consumption, alongside the immense amount of greenhouse gasses that are emitted into the atmosphere.

A society of overconsumption, the society we are all a part of. Annually, 1.3 BILLION tonnes of perfectly edible food is rejected, destroyed, wasted and sent to landfill. Valued at 1.4 Trillion, EVERY SINGLE YEAR! That equivalates to enough food to feed roughly 3 billion people, that's ⅓ of our whole planet's population. This tremendous volume of waste eats away at our crucial natural resources, such as our land, water, healthy and nutritious soil, and our energy/electricity. 

Another major consequence of food waste being landfilled is methane, a hazardous greenhouse gas that's emitted into our atmosphere. Exposure to such has caused over 1 million premature deaths annually over the past 2 decades. Methane is 80 times more potent at heating than carbon dioxide,  causing global warming. It achieves this through trapping heat in the atmosphere. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, methane is responsible for over a quarter of our whole planet's global warming. Reducing our food waste, by reducing your consumerism, creating your own compost, and growing your own fruit and veggies. Reducing our Waste output will lessen our greenhouse gas emissions. The less greenhouse gasses we churn out, the healthier our planet will be.

As I have stated to you, the demise of our planet is coming, but if we reduce our food waste, it will certainly help prevent the inevitable. Due to the amount of food our civilization wastes, and the greenhouse gasses emitted from landfill, i am certain the demise of our planet is not far away. If we continue to waste as much food as we currently do, our ignorance, arrogance and laziness will come back with karma 10x worse than our current actions.