Impact of Food Wastage on Ecosystem and Environment

Running head: Management
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Contents
Contents.....................................................................................................................................1
Introduction- Impact of Food Wastage on Ecosystem and Environment.................................1
Problem statement:..................................................................................................................2
Ideal Situation:......................................................................................................................2
Reality:.................................................................................................................................2
Consequences:....................................................................................................................3
Proposal:..............................................................................................................................3
Rationale:.................................................................................................................................3
Research Questions:................................................................................................................4
Methodology:............................................................................................................................4
Resource Identification:............................................................................................................5
Discussion and findings:..........................................................................................................5
Preventable Causes of Food Wastage:...............................................................................5
Food Wastage statistics in Australia:...................................................................................6
Impacts of Food Wastage:...................................................................................................7
Importance of reducing food wastage:.................................................................................7
Strategies to reduce or manage food wastage:...................................................................8
Conclusion:..............................................................................................................................8
Links to Australian Curriculum:................................................................................................9
References:............................................................................................................................11

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Introduction- Impact of Food Wastage on Ecosystem and Environment
Estimates from the United Nations show that one in every nine people on earth does
not have sufficient access to food in order to lead a healthy life and more deaths are caused
due to hunger and starvation than from malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis combined (fao.org.,
2019; news.un.org, 2019). However, at the same time, almost a third of the food being
produced ends up being wasted for various reasons. The wastage of food can be caused
due to both loss of food as well as wastage of food (news.un.org, 2019; blogs.worldbank.org,
2019). Wasting food therefore is not only wrong morally, but also can cause economic loss
as well as impact the ecosystem and environment (blogs.worldbank.org, 2019). According to
Balaji and Arshinder (2016), events such as natural calamities or due to a lack of resources,
skills or infrastructure, while food wastage occurs when edible food is discarded intentionally
due to improper planning and storage of food or when the supply of the food exceeds the
demands (Priefer et al., 2016). A lot of food is also wasted by retailers when the food is
being discarded for not meeting their quality or aesthetic standards (Negi & Anand, 2018).
Studies by Sun et al. (2018) shows that more than 1.6 trillion tones of food is wasted
every year, most of which either gets dumped into the ocean or finds its way into the landfills
and is adversely impacting the ecosystems across the world. The wastage of food is also
causing a significant stress on the natural resources, adding to its depletion (Eriksson et al.,
2018).
The aim of this study is to understand the adverse impacts of food wastage on the
environment and ecosystem using qualitative data from academic literature, websites of
governments and retailers and survey questions and identify how the findings from the study
can be related to the Australian academic curriculum.
Problem statement:
The aim of developing a problem statement is to understand the problem better by
describing the existing environment, where the problems occurring, how it is affecting the
environment as well as understand what the ideal outcomes or desired conditions should be.
Based on such understanding, a proposal for potential solutions can be developed that can
be implemented to address the problem (Priefer et al., 2016).
Ideal Situation:
The ideal situation for this problem is where food is not being wasted for preventable
or avoidable reasons such as improper storage, unplanned and irresponsible consumption
and instead using strategies to reuse or recycle food or composts them in order to prevent

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them from reaching the landfills or oceans. Apart from minimizing food waste, reusing waste
food for production of energy can also be an ideal situation that can significantly help to
reduce the carbon footprint of food waste and offset the waste of energy due to food
production (Cristóbal et al., 2018; Heller et al., 2018).
Reality:
In reality however, almost a third of the food being produced globally is wasted and
40% of the wastage is mainly due to preventable or avoidable causes. Moreover, a
significant amount of the waste food ends up in landfills and are not adequately recycled or
reused for other purposes such as animal feed, energy production or composting thereby
further aggravating the situation (Bugge et al., 2018; Castrica et al., 2018).
Consequences:
The wastage of food have several adverse consequences such as wastage of natural
resources such as energy, soil and water, unnecessary emission of greenhouse gases,
pollution of soil and water, loss of biodiversity as well as causing a loss of economy and
manpower. These factors clearly shows that food wastage can adversely impact out health
and wellbeing on the long term, as well as cause the loss of biodiversity and destruction of
the ecosystem thereby adversely impacting the environment (Graham et al., 2018; Castrica
et al., 2018).
Proposal:
The aim of the study is to understand how food waste impacts our environment and
ecosystem and thereby understand how it can impact us and sustainability of the
environment in the long term.
Rationale:
According to Abdelradi (2018), every year, more than 1.6 trillion tones of food is
wasted across the world, which amounts to approximately one third of the food produced.
This wastage causes economic losses of about 680 million USD in developed and 310
million USD in developing nations. The wastage of food is the most significant in rich
countries where almost 222 million tonnes of food gets wasted which is almost equal to the
net production of food (of 230 million tonnes) in the entire Sub-Saharan Africa and
equivalent to more than half of cereal crops produced across the world (Devin & Richards,
2018). Moreover the per capita waste of food in Europe and North America is almost 120 kg
every year, while for Asia and Africa it is almost 6-12 kg per year (Kibler et al., 2018).