food and carbon footprint

 food and carbon footprint

María José Ruiz, Sofía Palacio, Dayana Montoya y Laura Sierra 

It has said that approximately one thousand and three hundred tons of food is wasted per year, which means that one third of the world´s aliments is not well-spent, the quantity of food which is produced but not consumed occupy completely— in volume equivalent to water— the Volga river located in Russia which has a one million and three hundred fifty kilometer surface. This aliment is responsible of 3.300 million of gases which arrives to the atmosphere and influence the greenhouse effect.

According to an study made by the FAO (food and agriculture organization) called Food Wastage Foodprint; Impacts on Natural Resources  the carbon footprint of food produce by not eaten is estimated to 3.3 Gtonnes of Carbon dioxide , it means that food wastage ranks the third top emitter after USA and China.

The food wastage and its variables change in each part of the world depending on the way of living, the economic politic and the social factors. In developing countries, there are significant post-harvest losses in the early stages of the supply chain due to financial and organizational and limitation in harvest techniques, storage and transportation additional to climate conditions.

On the other hand, in developed countries the consumers throw away lots of food at the end of the of the supply chain, the reasons of this behavior could be insufficient purchase planning or too high quality standards that makes people has a exaggerate concern over “best–before dates”

The carbon dioxide produced In the primarly phase of the supply chain, it means in the agricultural production, is not high comparing to other phases (FAO, 2013). Therefore developing countries which based their economy in the agriculture activity and are mostly located in south America, Africa and southeastern Asia are ones of the less contaminators by the food wastage. The opposite happen in some regions such as North America, industrialized Asia and Europe when the waste of food is mostly done in the last phase of the chain, which is the most contaminating, consequently those regions are the biggest contributors to the carbon footprint caused by the food wastage.

To sum up, usually when people think about solutions for the increasing carbon footprint and it consequences such as the global warming makes refereces to the use of public or clean transport instead of cars, the save of energy by unploging electric devices and turning off lights, recycling, reforestation among other. Although, people don't think about how the waste of food that they daily made increase the carbon footprint, for that reason, is important to be aware of what is happening and read about how they can make a difference reminding that we have only this world but we are acting like we had three of them.