According to the food and agriculture organization of the UN, one in nine people doesn’t get enough food to eat. That is around 793 million undernourished people who don’t have access to adequate food. 

Global hunger and poverty are among the major problems of the modern world. This hunger leads to malnourished people, which affects their health and ability to sustain themselves. It puts them in a vicious cycle with very few ways to make their lives better. To go forward as a society and country, we need to help each other and end this cycle.

While global hunger is a major worldwide concern, food wastage is still prevalent. You must have seen supermarkets and restaurants dumping extra or unsold food items into the garbage. This edible food waste ends up in landfills, leading to massive waste of perfectly good food. 

Approximately one-third of all food items end up as waste or get lost. That comes around to 1.3 billion tonnes of food that would have solved the hunger issue of many people. In addition, all the waste leads to adverse effects on the environment. This wasted food takes up 10% of the global greenhouse emissions. Furthermore, the rotting food items emit methane, which is again harmful to the environment. However, there’s an excellent solution to tackle both these problems at once.

Supermarkets and restaurants need to donate extra or surplus food items to shelters and those in need. It’ll be a perfect opportunity to save all that food from getting into the bin, leading to environmental degradation and higher expenses for the economy. 

Reducing food waste is an excellent way to tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is a greater need to plan and execute strategies to handle these donations. It can quickly turn into a big workload for charities and supermarkets if they go ahead without a plan. This might lead to increased liability, more logistics work, or a lack of incentives for supermarkets and restaurants. Here are some tips that could help them plan the donation drives easily:

• Supermarkets and restaurants can tie up with their local shelters and charities for donating food. This ensures that it reaches those in need at the correct time.

• They could develop quality standards and simple checks for food items before distributing them to people. Supermarkets or charity workers can handle this task.

• It would be better to set a fixed schedule for the pickup. Supermarkets usually throw away the extra food items each day. They could set a specific time to donate the excess food after the workday ends.

• It would help avoid the extra workload for the supermarkets to follow a schedule. They could contact the local charities and donate extra food to those in need.

 

If these donations are handled effectively, they could help out everyone. The supermarkets won’t have to throw away the excess, and people will get food. This way, charities would have a constant supply to serve those in need. 

There would be no liability on the economy or environment to dispose of the food waste. The government or local bodies could even turn this into a rule to help fight off food wastage and hunger. This will help ensure a proper system and compliance from supermarkets and restaurants. 

Therefore, it is an excellent measure to donate extra food items from supermarkets to those in need. Other than the extra work, there are no downsides to this plan. We should get to this strategy and help fight food wastage and global hunger together. 

FAQs

Q1: How is food wastage a global issue?

Food wastage has shown high statistics around the globe. One-third of all food goes to waste, costing around $940 million to the global economy. 

 

Q2: Which countries have the highest rates of undernourishment?

Somalia, Yemen, the Central African Republic, and Chad have the highest rates of undernourishment. 

 

Q3: What is the environmental impact of food wastage? 

The wasted and rotting food leads to methane production in landfills, which is 28x stronger than carbon dioxide. Furthermore, food wastage leads to 10% of the global greenhouse emissions. 

 

Q4: How can supermarkets avoid food wastage?

Forecasting the demand for specific food items would help reduce waste. Supermarkets should order limited raw materials and perishable food items to avoid the end of the day wastage. 

 

Q5: How could supermarkets plan food donation drives? 

Supermarkets can tie up with food banks, charities, and shelters to pick up the surplus food at the end of the day.

 

Q6: How could they ensure food quality before donating it to those in need?

The charities and food banks should take correct measures to sort out food items. They need to throw out expired or bad food items and set up standards for quality testing before serving them to the people.