The development of numerous techniques has led to an increased ability to preserve different types of food. Paradoxically, the increase in conservation techniques has also been accompanied by an increase in food waste at a global level. This happened because the food available became more easily available (e.g. in supermarkets), more varied and more easily storable, thanks to refrigerators and freezers.
This waste is due to various factors, including poor meal planning, easier and more impulsive purchasing (e.g. supermarket offers), the use of standardized portions and high quality, labeling and production standards. For this reason, in the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda we find point 12 “Responsible consumption and production”, and target 12.3 “Halve global food waste per capita at retail and consumption levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses”.
Source: UNO
Food waste: a global phenomenon
As can be read on the Italian Ministry of Health website, “food waste” refers to all products which, while still usable, are eliminated for economic, aesthetic reasons or due to an expiry date that is too close.
Food waste can be classified into three categories: avoidable, possibly avoidable and unavoidable. The first category includes thrown but perfectly edible food, the second includes food that could be used but you choose not to (e.g. potato peelings), and the third includes food that is not edible for humans (such as bones or eggshells).
In general, to limit food waste, especially in the first two categories, one can act through an adequate shopping, a correct reading of the expiry dates (not confusing them with the minimum conservation terms, which are a non-rigid indication of the limit within which the food should be consumed) and careful conservation (especially in the case of foods stored in cold places such as refrigerators and freezers).
As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) points out, food waste is a triple threat: for the climate, for food security and for the sustainability of systems agri-food. This situation is then worsening in the presence of growing global hunger and an increase in food prices worldwide (due for example to the war in Ukraine).
Food waste not only represents around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making the climate unstable and putting crops increasingly at risk, but it mostly happens within the home: according to UNEP ( United Nation Environmental Program), 61% of waste occurs in households, 26% in restaurants and 13% in retail. Furthermore, 14% of waste is generated between collection and arrival in shops and 17% during sale and consumption.
Source: FAO.
Also for this reason, FAO and UNEP have decided to establish the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste (IDAFLW) on 29 September, in order to underline the importance of reflecting and take action to improve the global agri-food system, avoiding degradation of agricultural land, greenhouse gas emissions, loss of biodiversity and consumption of groundwater.
Shelfy: help from the inside
Food waste is therefore a phenomenon that occurs worldwide and at several points in the food chain. So what can you do at home to limit it?
As previously mentioned, one of the factors that reduces food waste is careful food storage. In addition to cleaning correctly and knowing how the temperature is distributed (for example whether it is homogeneous or not) to improve the position of food, a tool that can extend the life of food in refrigerators is Shelfy, a product of the Italian start-up Vitesy.
Shelfy is a compact device to be inserted into the refrigerator to purify the air: inside the fridge there are bacteria, mould, spores and various types of chemical substances which are responsible for the maceration of food.
The device consists of a battery (rechargeable, with autonomy of up to 30 days), a fan for air circulation and a photocatalytic filter. This last component is the heart of the product: washable with water and reusable, it incorporates pollutants and renders them harmless – unlike HEPA filters which simply incorporate substances without eliminating or modifying them. This allows not only to reduce odors by 80% but also to limit the bacterial load by approximately 10 times, extending the life of food and limiting food waste – as well as economic waste.
The device can then be connected to Alexa and Google home, which allows you to modify its functionality (find out more). The dedicated app notifies you when it is necessary to clean or replace the filter, and also provides data on energy consumption (counting how many times the fridge is opened) and suggestions on how it can be reduced.
From production to packaging, including transport which supports UPS’s Carbon Neutral project (information on CO2 compensation in the article Carbon Offset: a necessary challenge), the company tries to limit the use of plastic and the creation of waste.
Food waste: also an ethical problem
Food production remains a sector in which much can still be done to improve and reduce the environmental impact, acting both as a society and as individuals: from when we make the shopping list to when we put the products in the fridge, the fields of action are multiple.
However, a fact that should always be underlined when talking about food waste is that, in 2021, the number of people affected by hunger rose to 828 million (150 million more than in 2019, approximately two and a half times the Italian population), and there are 3.1 billion people unable to follow a healthy diet: lost and wasted food could feed 1.26 billion people, thus eliminating the problem of world hunger.
Graduated in Environmental Humanities (Unive) and Natural Sciences (Unipd). Passionate about ethology, she works as an environmental educator and joined Atmosphera Lab as Social Media and writer in 2022.
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