Food Wastage in Singapore

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW, every day last year, each person in Singapore wasted an equivalent of one packet economy rice where experts say it is about 400 grams of food wasted every day. All this added up to an astounding record of 796,000 tonnes - the weight of about 1,420 fully loaded Airbus A-380s - of food waste, according to National Environment Agency statistics released in march. Millions of people around the world go to bed hungry every night, and yet millions of tons of food end up in trash cans. Singapore's food waste comes from many different sources which are food manufacturers, supermarkets, hotels and restaurants. Not forgetting each individuals in households, we are all guilty of wasting food. In addition, small unforeseen actions like pressing a mango to check whether it is ripe, can damage the fruit itself and chances are, it will be left unsold. If you were to refer to the photo below, the amount of food that we waste is equivalent to the size of 600 Olympic Swimming Pool. This basically shows that we are wasting food in large scale and it isn't a good sign because food, a resource, is finite.

A figure comparison of food wastage with swimming pools

If this were to go on, we will all end up with no food to consume. The problem can only be solved by identifying the cause. We humans, are the main culprit of food wastage. Hence, the responsibility lies on us. If you refer to the photo below, a child dies every 5 seconds as a result of hunger. Not everyone is as fortunate as us, being able to fill our stomach and avoid starvation. So why are you wasting food? We must all play a part by altering our bad customs in our daily lives so that food, a paramount necessity of life, can be utilized well. Today, let's begin the first move to do our part in minimizing food wastage.

 Statistic of children dying due to hunger