Curbing food waste

Daniel Abramowicz - Executive Vice President Technology and Regulatory Affairs, Crown Holdings

With rising global populations, food security is an increasingly important concern. Fears of food shortages are constant and growing in certain parts of the world. Policymakers agree that food insecurity poses a threat not only to human welfare but also to global peace. To help combat this threat, it's time to take a close look at food waste and at strategies to mitigate the problem.

A tremendous amount of food is wasted on this planet. According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), we throw away 1.3 billion tons of food annually, or more than 350lbs every person. With the many ways in which food is lost or discarded - from harvest through to consumption - it is unsurprising that spoilage and waste are considered significant sustainability concerns. This article examines the various points across the production and consumption cycle where waste occurs, and outlines processing and packaging technologies that can go a long way to appeasing the problem.

The value chain of food loss

At every point along the process of food harvesting, production and consumption, waste is an ever-present factor. Fruit, for example, is often discarded if it becomes bruised during picking or threshing. Farmers often leave crops in fields due to a lack of proper mechanical means of harvesting, or if commodity prices drop sharply and eliminate profit margins. During handling and storage, some are prone to being eaten by pests and are subject to degradation by disease or fungus.
Food can also be inadvertently wasted during processing and packaging. Unspoiled fruit or grains are every so often inaccurately marked as "not suitable" in production lots and discarded. And during the processing chain, there is the inevitable loss of products that are spilled when moved or being transported.
After food arrive at retail outlets, there is a percentage that is dropped or damaged in store. Some items expire and are discarded before they can be purchased. Then, consumers themselves throw out food, either because they prepared too much, failed to use it before the expiry date or didn't store it properly.

Regional variations
A country's economic status can be an indicator of where in the value chain food waste is more prevalent. According to the FAO, more than 40% of waste in mature economies takes place at distribution points and beyond, including the time items spend on retail shelves and in consumers' fridges. By contrast, in emerging economies more than 40% of waste occurs earlier in the value chain - during harvesting, production, handling and storage.
In the US, 40-50% of waste is generated by consumers and 50-60% by businesses, according to the EPA. The reasons vary at the retail and consumer levels, and include in-store 'two for one' promotions, particularly for food items with a short shelf-life. Retailers often discard food prior to its sell-by date or for cosmetic reasons.
In societies where food is accessible and relatively inexpensive, it's easy to purchase or cook larger portions than necessary. Additionally, leftovers, which are often not stored appropriately, can spoil more easily and be discarded.
Families in the US throw away 14% of the food they purchase, which is about $600 a year for each household, or $46 billion in total. In the UK, the government's Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimates that one-third of all food sold ends up as waste, even though as much as 50% of this food is still edible.
In emerging economies, most food waste is due to infrastructural and technological limitations in production and handling. Farmers often do not have access to robust harvesting technologies. Statistics highlight how these limitations can have a significant impact on food waste. In India and sub-Saharan Africa, between 35% and 50% of fruit and vegetables are thrown away annually. Between 25% and 50% of grain is wasted in eastern Europe, and as much as 80% of rice harvests in Asia are discarded.
Inadequate storage is another problem in emerging economies; about 21 million tons of wheat in India and 3.2 million tons in Pakistan are lost due to poorly engineered storage facilities.

Technologies to mitigate waste
Several new technologies developed for use in food production and storage are helping to reduce the problem. One example is rapid freezing, which uses electro-conductive packaging film to accelerate cooling and reduce the size of ice crystals that form during freezing. Developed by a Japanese consortium comprised of Mutsumi Chemical Industry, SUN Electric and Enshu-Kasei, this process extends the shelf-life and improves the quality of frozen foods such as fish, which are susceptible to tissue damage from large ice crystals.
Vacuum packs such as FreshCase by Curwood represent another technology used to prevent items such as meats from spoiling. Sodium nitrate is used on film that comes into contact with the meat to preserve its bright-red colour, thus avoiding being mistaken as not being fresh.
Another example of new technology is the timer label developed by UWI Technology, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based smart-labelling company. This unique label indicates how long a product has been open and when it may no longer be safe for consumption.

Packaging to reduce waste
Food manufacturers and consumers are also faced with packaging choices that can reduce waste. Among the numerous formats available to manufacturers, metal packaging offers one of the most effective means of reducing waste on a global scale.
More than most other formats, metal cans preserve their contents and offer a long shelf-life. During packaging, food is cooked in the can to destroy bacteria and organisms that can cause botulism or other types of food poisoning. As a hermetically sealed environment, a metal can protects food from pathogens, light, oxygen and humidity. It keeps fruit and vegetables as fresh as the day they were packaged. This is especially critical in markets with a less well developed infrastructure. It also protects food during transport on poorly maintained roads in hot and humid climates.
The can's airtight seal is also tamper resistant; in fact, it has an unprecedented safety record. According to the FDA, "There has not been a single occurrence of a food-borne illness resulting from a failure of metal packaging in more than 35 years."
Metal is also logistically convenient, and it scores points for being sustainable and energy-efficient. Cans are easily stacked and stored without refrigeration in warehouses and shipping containers, and metal offers the greatest defense against bruising and spoiling. It is also 100% recyclable without degradation in quality, so it can essentially be recycled indefinitely. In regions that lack resources, metal's inherent sustainability makes it a more affordable and practical packaging option.
Metal packaging also comes in unique shapes and varying sizes, allowing consumers to portion food appropriately, reducing the potential for throwing away unwanted excess. Currently, more than 1,500 types of food are packaged in this way.
A quick look at some food preservation statistics highlights the benefits of metal packaging in reducing food waste. According to the US Department of Agriculture, consumers lose only 7% of canned sweetcorn, but they lose 32% and 36% of fresh and frozen corn respectively. Similarly, consumers lose an average of 42% of fresh peaches and 35% of frozen peaches, but only 8% of canned peaches.

Global awareness of food waste and its potentially disastrous consequences is growing. As manufacturers, consumers and even policymakers extend their efforts to reduce the potential for food insecurity to a global scale, some technological solutions to the problem already exist. Leveraging these technologies will help to make a difference.