Food Wastage: A Wicked Problem

1474 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Environmental impacts of food waste

Introduction
Food Wastage is the discarding of food initially intended for human consumption. Food Waste is a wicked problem as it matches the characteristics that define a wicked problem. The characteristics of a wicked problem as defined by Horst W. J Rittel and Melvin M. Webber in the ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’ are:
1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem
-A wicked problem cannot be universally defined, it can only be understood based on an individual’s standpoint of solving it.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule
-Wicked Problem is a near impossible situation to solve as the understanding of the topic is based on an individual’s view towards it. Wicked Problems are also hard to solve due to the chain …show more content…

20% of the food Australians purchase is thrown away. This leads to Australia wasting 4 million tonnes or $8 billion worth of food each year. Food isn’t just thrown away by families, it is estimated that 20% to 40% of fruits and vegetables are rejected before they are shelved in supermarkets to meet the high standards of customers.¹ Food Wastage is an epidemic that is only growing each year as Australians don’t take necessary and make better decisions in order to minimize food wastage. This is an important issue as it is costing Australians a large amount of their income it also has an effect on the environment. According to Move For Hunger, discarding food can leads to increase in methane in the atmosphere when foods rot in landfills which as a result leads global warming as methane absorbs infrared radiation which ends up warming the atmosphere. According to the Australian Government Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency’s research in 2010, they estimated that nearly 6.8 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide was produced due to food rotting in landfills. Future Directions estimates that fresh food produced in Australia is enough to feed 60 million people every day, yet we waste 7.5 million tonnes of food each year. Even with the help of many charitable organizations such as SecondBite and OzHarvest that have opened …show more content…

Improvement of technology that is involved in producing, processing, storing and transporting the technology is a model that has been around for a while. This would allow the food to be stored for longer. This model has been developed over time, however, hasn’t been able to improve at the pace required as improving technology would cost a lot of time and money and possess a lot of risk that many businesses aren’t willing to take. Over the years many theories and models have been brought up to solve this issue however, none of them have been affective due to the amount of time and cost being involved, lack of knowledge that the general population has, not enough research behind it and many other various

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of On Dumpster Diving By Lars Eighner

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    The majority of people waste food on a daily basis. In fact, in the U.S. alone there is an estimate that over half of the food produced goes uneaten; meanwhile there are people who are in need of food, and it ultimately goes to waste (Dockterman). For example, in his essay, “On Dumpster Diving,” author Lars Eighner writes about his experiences of dumpster diving with his pet dog, during his years of homelessness. According to Eighner, much of the food and materials he came across in the dumpsters were in usable shape, and many items were new. Clearly there needs to be a change in American food waste, in current and, hopefully not so much in, future generations.

    Read More

  • Anna Lappe's The Climate Crisis At The End Of Our Fork)

    825 Words  | 2 Pages

    Humans are damaging the planet to live comfortably, we must change the way food is distributed worldwide, support local farmers and switch to a healthier diet in order to stop global warming. The current global has been getting better for us humans over the years, from eating bread and eggs 3 times a day in the XV century, now we can eat better than the kings of those times, however the much of the food in not healthy and the global food system still fails in getting food to every individual in the planet and in addition it contributes to the destruction of our world. Ms. Anna Lappe explains how the food system contributes to around 1/3 of the global warming issue in her essay “The Climate Crisis at the End of Our Fork”, while a group of Plos one explains the issues about the export and import of food growth over the last 50 years in the

    Read More

  • Summary Of The No Nonsense Guide To World Food

    769 Words  | 2 Pages

    Roberts believes that “food is a solution, a cause for joy and positive energy” (Roberts, page 18). Most of the time, it is more costly to waste the food than to use the food as a tool, which can bring new opportunities. As the example he provides in the book, Will Allen, a gardener from the US, uses spent grain as an opportunity to make compost for sale and to heat his own greenhouses using the heat generated from the composting process (Roberts, page 21). This way, he has also helped find an effective way to dispose of used food rather than treating it as trash which is actually not cheap to manage. Hence, Roberts concludes that there are so many hidden resources in the world, which can be used to work with food to create opportunities and to benefit the society, economy and environment while saving money (Roberts, page

    Read More

  • Wasteful Americans

    1955 Words  | 4 Pages

    As Americans, we waste more food than many countries even consume. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “The average American trashes 10 times as much food as a consumer in South east Asia” (Hsu). That is about equivalent to eating 10 meals to a consumer in South East Asia’s one meal. We throw away our left over food just because we are done ea...

    Read More

  • Food Waste In America Essay

    978 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to Roni Neff, Marie Spiker, and Patricia Truant, up to 40% of all food produced in America is thrown away (Neff, Spiker, & Truant, 2015, p.2). This wasted food is worth hundreds of billions of dollars that is lost each year in the United States alone, and creates many threats to our country. Food waste is an important and widespread issue in the United States because most of the food thrown away is perfectly fine, it could be used to feed the hungry, and the waste hurts the environment.

    Read More

  • Veganism And Veganism

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    As public attention focuses on the impact of policy changes on the climate, we may overlook an important contributor to the climate crisis: our food systems and the daily food choices we make. It may sound hyperbolic that our roast beef sandwich is contributing to environmental degradation of the planet. But mounting evidence of the impact requires our attention and action as global citizens. And each of us can do something about it, today, by taking what we eat as seriously

    Read More

  • The Negative Effects Of Animal Waste: The Waste Of Food

    2448 Words  | 5 Pages

    The scary reality is that, according to the book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It), “landfilling of food is on the rise – the rate doubled from 1980 to 2007” (Bloom 15). This reality leads to a number of negative consequences such as an increase in methane production and pollution. “Most food waste, approximately 33 million tons, is disposed in landfills, costing $750 million and accounting for 25% of U.S methane emissions” (Uga.edu).

    Read More

  • Summary Of Food Foolish

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    Food waste is the food that makes it to the market but is never eaten. The authors argue that these problems are solvable. If we took a fraction of money to increase agricultural yields and spend it instead on infrastructure to move food to the markets, with this we would achieve the global food and nutrition security a lot sooner. As a result, this would provide a greater financial security and environmental sustainability, according to the authors. The supply chain is extremely important to the cause, the more efficient it is it implies that food will be kept protected and cold until the food is processed and consumed.

    Read More

  • Effects Of Food Waste On The Environment

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    Individuals waste some $14.6 billion worth of food every year, about 47 percent of the total. This mainly consists of food items that Canadians buy with the intention of using in their homes, but never do, so it ends up eventually in a landfill or composted. This is a very sensitive environmental issue as these composting facilities create massive amount of Methane gas that are released into the environment, damaging the ozone and attributing to the man-made manipulation of the global warming/cooling process. Food manufacturing and processing is responsible for as much as one-fifth of the food wasted across the country. Ten per cent of food waste happens on the farm, before even entering the larger food system. Retailers waste another 10 per cent. Restaurants and hotels waste a further nine per cent. The rest is wasted at processing facilities such as food terminals, or during transportation. The report notes that food waste in the travel sector is especially egregious — up to five kilograms per person, per day, according to some estimates. Even using more conservative estimates, these watchdog groups say that we could feed 200,000 inhabitants of poorer countries for a year with nothing more than the food that gets wasted on European airlines every year. On international flights, regulations require any excess food be thrown out after a flight — regardless of whether it was used, cruise liners seem to be the worst culprit, generating the highest per capita food waste. Waste like that costs everyone, not just the person who

    Read More

  • Negative Impacts of the Fast Food Industry

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...veryday foods require a lot of energy and release a lot of greenhouse gases to produce. This is the reason we should stop wasting the foods, consume less meat, and eat more locally grown food.

    Read More

  • Essay On Food Waste

    1295 Words  | 3 Pages

    Food waste is the biggest space consumer in our landfills, which may seem surprising, but shouldn’t be based on the amount of food that is consumed on a daily basis and the large proportion of food that is wasted. The main problem with the amount of food waste in landfills, is that it produces methane as it decomposes which is detrimental to the atmosphere as a whole, and can have lasting effects. The buildup of all the methane produced results in huge amounts of global warming potential which is extremely detrimental to our environment. Also, because of the fact that so many resources are used in order to grow certain foods, they are all being put to waste when the food that used these resources goes directly to landfills. This applies to water usage, soil richness, and petroleum usage. As far as costs go, food waste affects the economy by about $750 billion a year, which is a massive amount of money that could be going elsewhere. Because we are losing so much money, it is clear that there is a great need for change in the food system, especially in the United

    Read More

  • Food Waste Essay Solution

    950 Words  | 2 Pages

    Food waste is huge issue these days. It is a huge amount of waste that ends up in landfills and can have lasting effects on the environment. One of major issues of food waste is the greenhouse gases that it produces. Methane gas is the main culprit when it comes to the gases being released. This can absorb infrared radiation and heat up the earth’s atmosphere and cause climate change. Another issue that food waste causes is, water loss due to use for production of fruits and vegetables.

    Read More

  • Food Security: A Global Issue

    696 Words  | 2 Pages

    There are those that believe our planet has reached its maximum capacity to sustain humanity and we need to reduce our population to rectify it. It is also said that our planet is well capable of providing both the nutrition and caloric needs for humanity, both now and into the future as well. Regardless of where one’s opinion of the facts fall between these two arguments, global food security is not where it should be. Uneven development could be argued to be a cause of this. But it is not the only issue affecting the planet.

    Read More

  • Everyone Should Care About The Environment

    1297 Words  | 3 Pages

    The United States produces “about 8.25 billion tons of solid wastes each year” (Russell 1). People do not realize the impact they have on our planet and environment. When people throw anything in the trashcan, they are contributing to the destruction of our planet. The number landfills in the United States are decreasing, but the amount and volume of waste being thrown into the new landfills is increasing (Russell 4). Because of this escalating amount of garbage, Methane which contributes to global warming is an outcome of these landfills (Russell 7). As a result, our planet is suffering because of this epidemic. The garbage being put in the landfills could be recycled, but not enough businesses, ...

    Read More

  • Solid Waste Management

    1469 Words  | 3 Pages

    Further, “In 2008, nearly 13 tonnes of waste were generated by Canadian households. Of this, more than 8.5 million tonnes were disposed of in landfills or incine...

    Read More

More about Food Wastage: A Wicked Problem

Open Document