Have you ever wondered how to save our environment with super simple ways that you can do at home? Here are five fresh food waste facts for kids.
That’s a lot of food and it is wasted for many different reasons. Some food is lost during production or while it is being packaged or sent to shops so it never gets sold. Food that does get sold often gets wasted because of overbuying. We can avoid overbuying food in a few different ways.
We can plan meals for the week so we don’t buy too much, we can check the use by dates on food when we buy it so we know when to use or freeze it, and we can avoid shopping while we are hungry. When we shop hungry we are more likely to buy things we don’t need.
When wasted food is thrown away it ends up in landfill sites. While in landfill sites this wasted food starts to break down and creates methane gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas which is more even potent than carbon dioxide. When methane goes into the atmosphere it traps heat there because it is a greenhouse gas, this makes global warming worse.
Food waste also means wasting water because of how much water it takes to grow food. We use 25% of our fresh water to grow crops and graze animals for food that is wasted. That’s a lot of wasted water for the environment.
When we freeze food it can last months longer than when it is kept in the freezer. A great food to freeze is sliced bread. We throw away 20 million slices of bread everyday and bread is super easy to freeze and use. If you freeze bread in slices you can defrost and cook them in the toaster. That’s an easy way to avoid a lot of waste.
A big reason for food being wasted is because it doesn’t look appetising even if it is still tasty and good to eat. Supermarkets and shops want to make sure you want to buy their food so they pay a lot of attention to how the food looks. If food looks tasty we are much more likely to buy it. This means that 40% of fruit and vegetables are wasted because they look bad.
Some companies have started using these ‘wonky’ or ugly fruits and vegetables to make foods to prevent them from being wasted. These fruits and veg are blended into smoothies, baked into pies, and made into pickles. This means it doesn’t matter what they look like, they are still enjoyed.
Even if you can’t finish your meal and don’t want to save it for tomorrow you can help reduce food waste by disposing of the food responsibly. When we compost leftover food it reduces the amount of methane produced. Compost made by this leftover food also helps grow new crops by creating new rich soil.
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about food waste as much as we loved teaching you about it. Now that you know how important this food waste is to our planet Earth, you can move on to learn more about our environment like: Energy, Wind Energy, Electricity, Water, Electromagnetic Waves, Recycling, Recycling Crafts, Recycling Paper, Plastic recycling, Rainbows, Farming, Seas and Lakes, Miraculous Atmosphere, Earth and Water Cycle.
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