insideKENT Magazine Issue 52 - July 2016 | Page 59
Watch your waste
Odd, but true, that in our developed western
world, composting is still considered a pretty
radical and forward-thinking practice – not many
of us, especially city dwellers, do it, but we all
should. According to The United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organisation, approximately onethird of global food is wasted and a recent report
published by them has put into context the
shocking environmental impact of this waste:
“Without accounting for greenhouse gas
emissions from land use change, the
carbon footprint of food produced and
not eaten is estimated to be 3.3 tonnes
of CO2 equivalent: as such, food wastage
ranks as the third top emitter after the
USA and China. Globally, the blue water
footprint – i.e. the consumption of surface
and groundwater resources – of food
wastage is about 250 km3, which is
equivalent to the annual water discharge
of the Volga River, or three times the
volume of Lake Geneva. Finally, produced
but uneaten food vainly occupies almost
1.4 billion hectares of land; this represents
close to 30 percent of the world's
agricultural land area.
”
Wow. Along with our aforementioned lacklustre
attitude towards composting, the selection by
farmers and supermarkets of fruit and vegetables
based upon their ‘perfect’ looks as opposed to
their taste and nutritional value is also a factor
that’s adding to the world’s massive amount of
wasted food.
So, what can we do about it? Get composting
for starters. Even the tiniest of city kitchens has
room for a small, worktop composter and you
can use the soil in your houseplants. Check your
fridge and make a list of what you need when
you go food shopping as opposed to buying
what you usually buy and finding later that you’ve
doubled up. Use up your leftovers – fruit and
vegetables that are slightly past their best make
for really flavoursome soups and smoothies. And,
if you have the garden space, have a go at
growing your own food; kale and spinach grow
like the clappers once they start!
Cut down on meat and fish
Since 1974, our consumption of takeaway food
has almost doubled, rising from 80g per person
per week to 150g, around 56g of which comprises
kebabs, chicken and burgers. But, just one
quarter-pounder burger takes around 30 showers
worth of water to produce – getting meat from
the farm to our forks is a massively water-intensive
process, which in turn has a significant negative
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effect on climate change, as does our general
consumption of meat; red meat in particular.
In fact, the environmental impact of eating beef
dwarfs that of other meats and research has
shown that eating less red meat could be as
effective at cutting your carbon emissions as
giving up your car. It requires 28 times the amount
of land to produce beef than chicken or pork and
11 times the amount of water, a process that
overall results in five times the amount of climatewarming emissions being released.
A recommended daily portion of lean meat is the
same size of a deck of cards – firstly, we’re eating
too much, and secondly, a lot of us are eating
too much cheap, non free-range meat, which
moves the debate into a very grey, ethically murky
area where chickens are packed into senseless
facilities and force fed, and animals are somehow
bred to feel no pain – which says enough, really.
As a rule of thumb, cheap meat means corners
are cut where the safety, health and welfare of
animals is concerned, so it’s better to buy good
quality meat and eat it less frequently.
What else can we do? Stop eating as much fish
too – the quick-fix global fishing practices being
employed to cope with our increasing seafood
consumption are contributing to man-made
climate change and damaging our oceans. And,
when you do buy beef, choose grass fed rather