Food and Water are two most important necessities of life. Regardless of where we live and what we do, we need ample food and water to live a decent life. In-fact, these two commodities play a crucial role in determining what sort of life we will live. An empty stomach would not allow you to focus properly on the task at hand. Hunger would eat your talent like termites eat the wood. Whatever we do in our day-to-day life, we do to ensure that we can have enough food for ourselves and our beloved ones. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory has therefore categorised food and water as among the most basic of human needs along with other necessities like air, shelter, sleep, clothing and reproduction. Once these necessities are fulfilled only then we can focus on anything else in our lives and are able to utilize our given talent and potential to fullest. Thus, it is crucial for us to do all we can, to prevent the wastage of food.
When we waste food, we waste several other resources as well. We need agricultural land, water and fertilizers to grow food. We need fossil fuel to drive tractors to manage our agricultural plots and harvest crops. We need fossil fuels to transport harvested crops from farms to processing centres and we again need fossil fuels to deliver food from processing centres to grocery stores. We produce 64% of our electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear power that we then use to store food on the shelves in the grocery stores. Finally, we need fossil fuels to bring the groceries home via our personal vehicles or public transport. So, it is not just the food that we waste, we waste numerous other resources as well that have a very big impact on our environment. As per European Commission’s website, burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) emits greenhouse gases and increases their concentration in our atmosphere. This increase in concentration then causes our previously stable climate to change. In-fact carbon dioxide gas produced through human activities is the biggest cause of global warming. Thus, we can clearly see how big of a negative impact we leave on environment when we waste food.
Time is slipping through our hands, and we must act now to ensure a sustainable future for us and our coming generations.
According to UN Environment Programme’s Food Waste Index Report 2024, households in Pakistan waste roughly 130 kilograms of food per capita each year. Altogether, households in Pakistan litter over 30 million tonnes of food each year. We must put an end to this wastage of resources. On the contrary, Sri Lanka waste 76 kilograms of food per capita, followed by Bangladesh which litter 82 kilograms of food per capita and Bhutan that waste only 19 kilograms of food per capita. Similarly, Sweden loses 61 kilograms of food per capita, followed by Finland that loses 53 kilograms of food per capita and Ireland with 48 kilograms of wasted food per person each year. We must learn to manage our food more sustainably. We must bend the food wastage curve in Pakistan. As per UNFPA Pakistan, the cumulative population of Pakistan would be over 400 million by 2050. Unfortunately, our business-as-usual approach in managing food would not work in 2050. It is not working today, and it will not work in future too. Just imagine, that instead of wasting over 30 million tonnes of food to waste bins each year, if we would instead manage it sustainably and then export this food to countries across the globe. It would be financially sustainable and ecologically viable for Pakistan’s economy. Do you know that each tonne contains a thousand kilograms. Thus, 30 million tonnes of food would be 30 billion kilograms of food. Now imagine, if each kilogram of food is worth 3.5 rupees, the cumulative sum for 30 million tonnes of food wastage would be over a whopping 100 billion rupees per year (i.e. few hundred million USD). Can we afford to throw 100 billion rupees to trash bins each year in Pakistan? In a decade, it would be over 1000 billion rupees (i.e. few billion USD) that Pakistan will lose due to wastage of food. Can we afford that wastage of resources? I don’t think so and firmly believe that none of us would agree on that either.
We must turn our households into micro-engines of Sustainable Development to prevent wastage of food in Pakistan. Each of us can play a crucial role in helping Pakistan in bending the food wastage curve. This is the least we all can do for Pakistan to make it more sustainable for us and our coming generations. We are better than this and it is our moral and ethical responsibility to prevent food waste in our country. We need to ensure that we fill in our plates with adequate amount of food that we can eat in one serving. It is completely unnecessary to fill in plates way more than we can eat and then throw the leftover food in trash cans. Similarly, it is equally essential for us to store food properly in fridge and freezers. Most importantly, we should cook just the adequate amount of food that we can eat in a single day. By doing so, we can eat freshly prepared food each day and can prevent wastage of food too. Quite often, it happens that we lose the urge to eat the food that was prepared the other day for one reason or another. Therefore, it is both healthy and resource efficient to prepare just the right amount of food that we can finish in a single day.
To conclude, we must manage our food more sustainably in our homes to prevent its wastage. As per UNDP Pakistan, per capita water availability in the country sharply decreased from 2172 cubic meters per inhabitant in 1990 to 1306 cubic meters per inhabitant in 2015. This mean that our water availability has decreased 866 cubic meters per inhabitant during 1990 – 2015. This should act as a wake-up call for Pakistan as we need water to grow food in the farms and to cook it in our kitchens. Our homes are our battlegrounds, and it is there we will fight our war against food wastage. By minimizing the amount of food we waste, we can certainly avoid the wastage of water and fossil fuels too. It can prove to be a key step in mitigating water stress and scarcity. It will also bend our greenhouse gases emission curve and would facilitate us in fighting climate change and reducing energy import bill. We must change our perspective to how we manage food in our homes. We must show respect to nature and do all we can to prevent wastage of resources. We cannot take these ecosystem products and services for granted. We would be too un-wise, if we would follow that path. Time is slipping through our hands, and we must act now to ensure a sustainable future for us and our coming generations. Choice is ours and will always be.
The writer is a Stockholm-based policy analyst and the Founder / Operations Manager of Project Green Earth (www.projectge.org)