Reducing Food and Product Waste

• Research Paper submitted to the Faculty of St. Bridget College – Junior High School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for English 10.
• The paper focuses on precluding the impacts of food and product waste.

Research Proposal

• Topic: Food waste and product waste.
• Stand: Preventing and reducing food/product waste saves resources and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
• Focusing Question: How can preventing food and product waste lead to saving more resources?
• Subordinate Questions:
  • How does overconsumption affect the environment?
  • Why is it important to be knowledgeable about food and product waste?
  • How can overconsumption lead to overproduction?
  • Why is food and product waste still a common event worldwide?

Rationale

• Food waste occurs when food is not consumed and is wasted due to pest infestation, mold, being left in public places, or spoilage.
• Food waste has several environmental impacts: increased greenhouse gas emissions, landfill usage, and resource depletion.
• Research aims to find ways to solve food waste and product waste problems, which can be achieved through education.
• Waste management, proper food storage, and chemical waste management are ways to prevent and reduce waste.
• Reduction of food/product waste helps the planet, promotes a healthier environment, saves money/labor, and contributes to economic growth.
• Reducing emissions and fighting the climate crisis can be achieved by reducing food loss and waste.
• The reduction of product waste can prevent pollution on land, air, and water.
• Reducing food/product waste avoids associated planet-warming emissions and could free up agricultural land for reforestation, removing carbon from the atmosphere.

Definition of Terms

• Food Waste: Food that spoils, expires, or is thrown away without being consumed.
• Product Waste: Excessive amounts of chemicals or substances discarded in land or water, causing pollution.
• Overconsumption: Excessive buying of products.
• Overproduction: Mishandling of chemicals or substances, emitting extra substances from factories that are not being used.
• Resources: Raw materials like wood, fiber, soil, and water processed to create new products.

Introduction

• Food waste is a challenge faced globally, resulting throwing away food that ends up in landfills and impacting the food system through higher prices.
• Solving food waste issues can help people save money and reserve food.
• Paper informs, educates, and alarms people about consequences if food/product waste rates continue to increase.
• The paper aims to study future developments and solutions to reduce waste, especially in food and products.
• Food/product waste results from overconsumption and overproduction, leading to excessive use and extraction of natural resources, which in turn causes greenhouse gas emissions which causes global warming and climate change;.
• Too much use of greenhouse gasses, food waste, improper handling or throwing of chemicals/substances can pollute air, land, and water
• Storing food properly, eating leftovers, and buying the right amount of perishable products can help prevent food waste.
• Factory workers should know proper handling and disposing of chemicals.
• Being a responsible consumer can help people buy the right amount of products and reduce waste.

Effects of Overconsumption on the Environment

• Overconsumption happens when consumers overuse available goods, products, and services, not replenishing or reusing them thereby contributing to food waste.
• According to ailuna.com (February 11, 2022), overconsumption occurs when resource use exceeds sustainable capacity, reduce consume can protect the planet.
• In 2024, Millstein stated overconsumption is totally tied to extracting natural resources.
• Niger Delta was once rich, but oil extraction destroyed the ecosystem and inhabitants centuries ago.
• In Brazil nearly 20% of the Amazon has been deforested, causing soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and increased carbon dioxide emissions.
• Deforestation endangers animals and local people's livelihoods.
• Overconsumption is abusing available products, leading to food/product waste and ecosystem damage, so reduce consumption by using reusable containers and reducing meat/dairy consumption.
• Activists argue the best way to reduce resource consumption is to spend less, and the world is facing climate change from overconsumption, which worsens global warming and air pollution.
• Excessive use and consumption of goods/services is a daily problem known as overconsumption, a common dilemma.
• People unknowingly overconsume, which may lead to the loss of natural resources. Purchasing environmentally friendly products over less friendly ones is a huge accomplishment.
• According to netimpact.org (2020, November 12), overproduction and overconsumption also harm the economy.
• Numerous industries struggled in the last decade because of overproducing.
• Overconsumption has a huge negative impact on the environment, leading to deforestation and worsening climate change.
• Overconsumption causes waste buildup, polluting air, water, and soil, and the way things are made for overconsumption also harms the environment.
• Fossil fuels accelerate global warming, harmful dyes and plastics from fast fashion pollute water, and overfishing impacts marine life.
• Growing cities take up natural spaces, causing more pollution, and threatening wildlife. Ecosystems cannot cope with excessive resource extraction leading to biodiversity loss and the deterioration of the natural world and when a resource is completely depleted, it's likely gone forever.
• Overconsumption example is the logging industry, which uses timber for construction, paper, and fuel, and deforestation results when timber is overconsumed.
• Since 1990, the world has lost 420 million hectares of forest land, which is a significant threat to civilization, because the environment cannot replenish resources fast enough, leading to lack of essential water, food, housing, and heating materials.
• In 2020, NetImpact.org stated the population consumes most of the resources, overproduction and overconsumption may not be instantly obvious.
• Most of the world may suffer malnutrition, dehydration, and disease.
• Coal and oil are non-renewable energy sources and fossil fuel releases expedite climate change and global warming.
• Air and water pollution affects everything and humans have reached the threshold of excessive energy use.
• The Philippines faces an energy crisis due to the depletion of the Malampaya natural gas fields, which currently provide 30% of Luzon's energy.
• Dwindling resources increases electricity costs and more are need to minimize degradation like sustainable appliances and switching off lights and appliances when not in use (Tengco, 2024).

Importance of Being Knowledgeable About Food Waste and Product Waste

• Being knowledgeable helps people understand food waste's negative impacts on the environment, food security, and climate change. Food waste wastes resources used in production, storage, processing, distribution, and preparation.
• Reducing food loss and waste benefits people and bad waste management harms people.
• Poor waste management is the improper handling of waste with negative consequences. Wasting food is wasteful for food that is essential to survive especially in a world with food insecurity.
• A lack of knowledge limits the ability to inform locally relevant solutions. Proper waste management leads to valuable materials for reuse, saving money.
• Not only does it reduce energy consumption, but it also protects the environment from deterioration.
• Environment benefits from reduced demand for resource extraction and lowers the chance of contamination by recycling.
• Most food waste occurs at the household-level, so understanding causes of consumer-generated food waste will be useful for prevention.
• Moral attitudes have a direct effect on food waste behavior, eating habits, shopping habits, and knowledge of food conservation.
• Shopping habits and knowledge of food conservation also mediate food waste behavior.
• Moral attitudes and shopping habits affect food waste, especially individuals that strongly believe throwing away food is wrong. Also, responsible shoppers also report less waste.
• Reduce food waste to foster strong condemnation and warn consumers against shopping excessively (Aydin & Yildirim, 2021).
• Reducing food and product waste can save resources, reduce freshwater use in crop production and reduces fertilizer use (Kummu et al., 2012).
• Reducing food and product waste can save money in business and households.
• Reduced consumption of food could reduce capita food waste by 50% by 2030 (United Nations, 2015; USDA, 2015).
• Consumers are the most wasteful in the food supply chain without the knowledge of proper waste disposal creating potential damage, health issues, and undermines sustainability of the food system.
• Food loss and waste can affect food security/availability and increase the cost of food.
• Adoption of integrated approaches needed to reduce food loss/waste, the United States wastes a quarter of freshwater and 4% of oil in food (Hall et al., 2009).
• Total loss equates to the waste of $161.6 billion annually, which in returns is and $371 wasted dollars in food wasted per capita (Buzby et al., 2014).
• Calorie loss of wasting calories is over 1,249 per capita per day in the US households food-insecurity annually (USDA ERS, 2019).

Overproduction as a Cause of Overconsumption

• Overconsumption leads to waste and spending, affecting people and communities.
• Overproduction causes increased pollution, environmental damage, resource depletion, and economic surplus.
• When there are lots of supplies buying happens as the products will likely be bought.
• Buying lots of products when there is an abundance of them can lead to overconsumption.
• Overproduction can lead to overconsumption because it can tempt consumers to buy more.
• Overproduction creates a false sense of abundance, encouraging consumers to overbuy, use marketing tactics to further lure buyers in resulting in environment effects (The Waste Makers (1960).
• CO2 has had a huge impact on global warming making confronting issues of environmental changes necessary (Gabriella, 2023).
• Clothing sector contributes to CO2 levels. And the industry should take secure method of production. Production and consumption connected prospects in the field of business.
• Merriam Webster describes overconsumption as "excessive consumption or use.
• Overproduction is more business related while overconsumption is more planetary oriented.
• Society must address the volumes being produced/consumed, as current lifestyles threaten boundaries, specifically the fashion sector and it unsustainable practices. Overproduction and overconsumption linked by discounting, a means of overproduction and consumption.
• Sales practices are pre, in and sale and retailers find discounting problematic with the potential to develop strategies that reduce end-of-season sales, for example, optimizing the supply chain and stimulating markets, as well as alternative solutions address the question of overconsumption into the future (Wulff, 2023).

Food Waste and Product Waste as a Current Occurrence Worldwide

• Getting food from farm to fork eats up 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses 50 percent of the U.S land, and swallows 80 percent of all freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet Americans throw out $165 billion of 40% of food each year (Gunders, 2012). The government should study these food losses and set waste goals.
• Some crops on the farm are left unharvested because of store standards (Gunders, 2015). Some restaurants throw large amounts of food for training.
• Regardless Society has evolved; waste remains and is still common. One cause of waste; the consumer behavior. Overbuying, bad storage, expiration confusion is the reason why trash.
• Throwing perfectly fine food such baked goods from the shelf that can not be given helps waste in the US system
• It is a struggle to nullifying food waste in a modern era where people suffer from hunger and meals are thrown out at $1 billion dollars a day.
• Furthermore, households are single handedly the most prominent factor, 570 million tons with input from the UNEP, around 569 tons of food trash.
• Food loss has around food loss ranges of 8-10% GHG, 735 Million starve and 13.2 are being Lost in manufactured foods is lost in the waste.
• 2019-2020 funding shows that low carbon Diets waste-management Remains Toughed. The funds remain USD$ 0.1 billion of USD$50 billion (Ukpana, 2024).
• The UN recommends that waste adaptation is needed to be designed and the is adaptation by there is foodloss and is there to sustainable and liable. Food waste proves to be a to its life when manufactoring to consumption that ties farm to residence in the global cost of over £770 billion worldwide.
• Roughly, 30-40% of food sold in the US is estimated for $278kg of food accounting for the supply is a year waste.
• 91.6 million tons is disposed for in China and 6.6M food tons is lost per year costing £19B annually.
• Malnutrition is a leading cause of food insecurity and food waste which occurs from the source to consumers.
• Studies aim for the current state in which happens in the Philippines, where food loss is more critical and can lead to a donation or fertilizer. There needs to reduction in wheat, veggies, sweets, starches and others should the need to reduce the in which can be utilized food preservation.
• Zoonotic such as the African Swine Fever and natural leads leads can contribute food waste and reduce collaberlations launching the need launch for the people too avoid and reduce the concept in which targets can in the spotlight ( Barrion et al., 2023). -Millions of Filipinos goes hungry to millions of generated for the Philippines with around 2.9 Million.
• WWF partner composting provides collection and support for partner buissness for households and buissness in Manila. 2 tons for metric is wasted in the Capital of region of Philippines ( Cos, 2022).

Conclusion

• Overconsumption and overproduction are a challenge that can lead to a resource crisis and is one of the increasing keys of increasing in rates of continuous rates.
• Ways to prevent; by being knowledgeable for the use of the product, especially when it can relate to the relation of people with their needs because they are able to consume for a longer time period leading to reduce for consumption especially in relation it's for the better material for reusing.
• It is important to remain aware or current affairs inside by doing so understanding that reduce waste contributes to gasses and will help behavior and business processes.
• Systemic is needed for for systematic through a responsible for our product change in a positive consumer mindset with the partnership by policy changes.
• Having a proper can lead to the reusing and also for better value.
• Harmful and non harmful for public health that can cause from harmful items to avoid buying too much, need, and waste and the costs of this is around $1,500 dollars.