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When we're wasting food we're not only wasting the actual food, we're wasting the energy
that was used to produce the food and process it and to transport it. We're wasting the
water that was used to produce the food; we're wasting the energy of people and all the care
and effort that people put into producing that food.
My name is Ralph Martin, the Loblaws Chair of Sustainable Food Production and a professor
in the Plant Agriculture Department at the University of Guelph.
The food waste first came to my attention when I first read the George Morris report
by Martin Gooch in 2010, and in that report he talked about how 40% of the food waste
in Canada is wasted and that's a cost to the Canadian economy of 27 billion dollars. When
I started this position in August 2011, addressing food waste and particularly reducing food
waste is something that became important to me.
We focused most of our research to date, here at the University of Guelph, on reducing food
waste in the home. And according to data we have, about half of the 40% of food that is
wasted, is wasted at the home, that's why we think it's important to look at this. Our
first goal is to get data to find out how much is actually being wasted. We did some
curb side work, where we not only weighed the food waste but we went through the garbage
and picked it out and we divided it into categories of bread and pasta, meat, dairy, fruits and
vegetables, and other. It was very interesting that over half the food waste, by weight,
was from fruits and vegetables. We're also now wanting to weigh food waste
at curb side and then we want to link that to a survey to find out from householders what
their understanding is about the food they waste and some of their habits that might
relate to food waste. For example we'll be asking questions about the size of a fridge
and how often people shop, and that type of thing
So according to some of the data I've looked at the average household, which is by the
way only 2.1 people per household -- I was surprised it was that small - the average
household spends about $140 per week on food. If half of the 40%, in other words 20%, is
wasted each week, that's 28 dollars, that means they're tossing away 28$ worth of food.
I personally think that probably we shop too infrequently, if we shopped a couple more times per week,
pick things up on the way home from work, and made sure we used what we bought at the
time that we bought it, or very close to that time, and if we had smaller fridges so that
we could actually see what was there, and so that items don't get buried at the back
of the fridge where we can't see them, I think those are practical ways we could reduce
food waste. It's all a matter of consciousness and thinking
about it and as we go into the future and look at climate change and some of the variables
that are going to come along with climate change, intense weather events and so on,
I think it's going to be important to be thankful for the food that we do have, to value
it, and to use it appropriately.