Food waste

Roughly one third of the food produced in the world gets lost or wasted every year. That’s 1.3 billion tons of food. Developed countries waste almost as much food (222 million tons) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tons), all according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. We can’t solve hunger in Africa by being more productive with our food back home. But we can address food insecurity back home. Over 8 million people are considered to be living in poverty in the UK, for example.

Today, I backed a Kickstarter project called the Nifties, which is a “social supermarket” in London, with a track record: “Customers struggling to make ends meet – and who can’t or don’t want to go to food banks – can buy goods at a discounted price, due to them being damaged or close to their sell-by date. … To date we’ve prevented 1,500 tons of food waste since July 2016, have fed 32,000 people and helped with humanitarian issues such as Grenfell Tower.”