Environmental Science: Food Waste Impact and Recommendations

This report delves into the significant environmental consequences of food waste, highlighting its impact on ecosystems, agriculture, and sustainability. It identifies that food waste, stemming from production inefficiencies, consumer behavior, and inadequate storage, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, and water pollution. The report emphasizes the role of organic and inorganic materials in food waste decomposition, leading to methane production, air pollution from gases like CO2 and NO2, and water leaching that reduces oxygen levels. Recommendations include promoting composting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improving soil fertility, as well as adopting policies similar to those in France, which focus on food redistribution, biochemical recycling, and reducing food processing waste. The report concludes that reducing food waste requires a multi-faceted approach involving government regulations, public awareness campaigns, and changes in consumer habits to mitigate environmental degradation.

Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Food wastage and environmental impact and solution
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

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Table of Content
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Literature review........................................................................................................................3
Environmental impact............................................................................................................3
Recommendation....................................................................................................................5
Composting........................................................................................................................5
France policies and law......................................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
Reference:..................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The term food waste refer disposal of unconsumed food into ground or water without
abiding by any recycling procedure. Food waste has various direct and indirect impact on
environment, ecosystem as well as agricultural sustainability. Consumable raw food materials
come from agriculture, livestock and fishery (Mu et al., 2017). These raw food materials are
processed in different food processing industries and in household cooking and finally reach
to the consumer. From emitting Greenhouse gases to increasing soil erosion food waste has
huge impact on the ecosystem as well as on the environment.
The report focuses on various procedures through which the food waste is affecting
the environment. After that, some recommendation will be made for the social awareness to
reduce the impact of the food waste and to reduce the food-wasting rate. The purpose of this
report is to examine the environmental impact of food waste and to find the recommendation
to avoid the devastating outcomes in near future. The process of composting and France
environmental policies and laws will be also discussed in the recommendation section.
Literature review
Environmental impact
Food wastages occurs mainly at the production stage of food processing system due to
insufficient skills, lack of appropriate infrastructure, natural calamities and poor practices. On
the other hand, food waste also occurs if consumers intentionally discard the edible food after
they fail to arrange their meals properly and store food until it becomes rotten or goes past the
predetermined expiry date. The environmental impact of food waste depends on the organic
and inorganic materials present in the environment, where the food disposal is done.

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Food waste decomposes:
More than 65% of food waste related pollution is occurred due to the natural
decomposition procedure (Papargyropoulou et al., 2014). Biodegradation of organic material
and the oxidation procedure causes extensive production of methane. Sometimes, the
excessive food waste disposal in a particular area reduces the fertilisation capability of
corresponding lands.
Air pollution:
The emission of the food degradation procedure contains of Carbon dioxide or CO2,
Nitrogen dioxide or NO2, Hydrogen supplied or H2S, methane or CH4 and many other
Greenhouse gasses (Schott, Wenzel & la Cour Jansen, 2016). Some of these gasses like
Carbon monoxide or CO are very toxic. All of these factors pollute the air and consequently
leads to global warming and other air pollution related issues.
Water leaching:
After the natural decomposition, the organic materials are carried by rain water and other
water flow to a larger natural water storage systems like pools, lakes, rivers and others. These
organic contents of the leachate result in a BOD or biochemical oxygen demand. After
reaching the ground water layer the BOD produces various acids that pollute the natural
water resources (Kamil, 2017). It also allows the oxidisation procedure and reduces the
oxygen level of water. The toxic gas hydrogen supplied may form when the oxygen level
reaches zero. This situation is a major cause of death for all higher organisms that are unable
to escape the toxic surroundings of the environment.
Soil erosion:
The organic decomposition of the waste food increases the amount of nitrates in the
soil. The fermentation procedure also causes the excessive amount of toxic gas emission.

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Some plants are able to absorb the surplus amount of nitrate from the nitrogen filled soils
(Salemdeeb et al., 2017). The excessive amount of nitrogen makes the soil toxic and loosely
bounded that consequently causes soil erosion.
Recommendation
The following recommendations should be considered to avoid the environmental impact of
wastage of foods:
Composting
In order to reduce the impact of food waste, composting can be considered as one of
the most effective measures. Composting can be defined as the natural process that involves
decomposition as well as recycling organic compounds into a humus rich soil called compost
(Eriksson & Hansson, 2015). Any business and institution that produces food waste thus can
easily decompose organic material in high quality compost. While food wastes, if buried in
landfills generate a significant amount of greenhouse gas as well as methane, composting the
wastes does not possess any such negative impact on the environment. Thus, several
individuals in US have already adopted the method of composting and as a result has
obtained significant carbon credit. This in turn has provided the municipally a big initiative to
perform this. According to researchers, 68.7% of the organic food wastes can be
decomposed. The list includes meats, coffee filters, vegetables, Fruits, grains, dairy products,
bread, unbleached paper napkins, eggshells and newspaper (Thi, Kumar & Lin, 2015). In
order to reduce the food waste composting method has reduced 13.2 million tons food waste
in 2010 at United State.

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France policies and law
The global environmental policies developed in Paris, France has some essential
environmental guidance policies to reduce the environmental impact of food waste. As per
the France environmental policies 2016, the food waste can be reduce through distribution.
Feeding the larger population who are suffering from hunger can reduce the overall waste or
disposal of foods. Apart from that biochemical recycling processes have been also suggested
by the environmental policies to recycle the maximum amount of waste food materials
(Salemdeeb et al., 2017).
Along with that the large supermarkets, hypermarkets and retail companies can sale
their damaged or slightly disputed food products by lowering by price range. It will allow the
larger amount of population to purchase and consume the food without making it a part of
waste. In industrial operation, the France environmental polices suggested to reduce the
disputed processed food products by upgrading their food processing life cycle and
equipments. French charities and food banks are also acknowledged by the the new
supermarket waste law (Ermolaev et al., 2015). Changing the consumption habit can make a
huge difference in food waste. The logistic operation will be affected through the
consumption procedure of the consumers that consequently leads to low wastage of foods.
France should organize educational campaigns in order enhance the knowledge of the public
about the negative impact of landfills and how composting can eradicate the same. Along
with that, positive impact of composting must be communicated.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that food wastage in France is much
lower than any other developed as well as developed countries. The role of the government as
well as he rules and regulation associated with it can be considered as the chief reason behind

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this. Food waste has various direct and indirect impacts on environment, ecosystem as well as
agricultural sustainability. Considering the fact that a huge amount of green house gas
methane is generated from food waste globally, it is high time to reduce the impact of food
waste in order to enhance environmental sustainability. Composting of food waste is one of
the effective methods that has the potential to completely eradicate the negative impact of
food wastage. Not only that, this process also posses the potential to enhance the fertility o f
the soil and thus can impose a positive impact on the economy of the nation. Hence
government of all nations should encourage com posting and incorporate rules and regulation
to support the same. It needs to be understood that environmental degradation due to food
waste posses high potential to affect the world. Hence strict action with public cooperation
can effectively eradicate the evil effect of the mentioned issue.

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Reference:
Eriksson, M., Strid, I., & Hansson, P. A. (2015). Carbon footprint of food waste management
options in the waste hierarchy–a Swedish case study. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 93, 115-125.
Ermolaev, E., Jarvis, Å., Sundberg, C., Smårs, S., Pell, M., & Jönsson, H. (2015). Nitrous
oxide and methane emissions from food waste composting at different
temperatures. Waste management, 46, 113-119.
Kamil, N. (2017). Food loss and waste management in Turkey. Bioresource technology.
Papargyropoulou, E., Lozano, R., Steinberger, J. K., Wright, N., & bin Ujang, Z. (2014). The
food waste hierarchy as a framework for the management of food surplus and food
waste. Journal of Cleaner Production, 76, 106-115.
Salemdeeb, R., zu Ermgassen, E. K., Kim, M. H., Balmford, A., & Al-Tabbaa, A. (2017).
Environmental and health impacts of using food waste as animal feed: a comparative
analysis of food waste management options. Journal of cleaner production, 140, 871-
880.
Salemdeeb, R., zu Ermgassen, E. K., Kim, M. H., Balmford, A., & Al-Tabbaa, A. (2017).
Environmental and health impacts of using food waste as animal feed: a comparative
analysis of food waste management options. Journal of cleaner production, 140, 871-
880.
Schott, A. B. S., Wenzel, H., & la Cour Jansen, J. (2016). Identification of decisive factors
for greenhouse gas emissions in comparative life cycle assessments of food waste
management–an analytical review. Journal of cleaner production, 119, 13-24.

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Thi, N. B. D., Kumar, G., & Lin, C. Y. (2015). An overview of food waste management in
developing countries: current status and future perspective. Journal of environmental
management, 157, 220-229.
Mu, D., Horowitz, N., Casey, M., & Jones, K. (2017). Environmental and economic analysis
of an in-vessel food waste composting system at Kean University in the US. Waste
management, 59, 476-486.