Chicken breasts, bruised apples and near-expiry yoghurt - these are some perfectly edible food items that suppliers have been throwing away, before they even reach supermarkets and our tables. A lot of this food waste has to do with consumers’ choices. Globally, we waste 1.3 billion tonnes of food a year, about one third of all the food we grow for human consumption. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, in industrialised cities in Asia like Hong Kong, Jakarta and Singapore, more than 50% of food waste happens at the consumer and retail stage. According to Nicholas Lim from food rescue group TreeDots, one Singapore slaughterhouse can throw out 7 to 15 tonnes of edible chicken meat every day. For one thing, supermarkets contractually bind suppliers to import an extra 10-20% of stock just in case there’s more demand than usual. Suppliers also have to comply with strict size standards, where chickens that are too big or too small do not make the cut. So TreeDots went directly to suppliers, bought up seemingly unsellable food and sold it for cheap to customers who wanted it. Other social enterprises like Treatsure, Hong Kong’s GreenPrice and Taiwan’s Goodwill Foods are in the same fight. Working directly with suppliers or farmers, these groups take goods that are close-to-expiry, might have dented packaging, or labelled “ugly” food and sell them directly to consumers on e-commerce platforms. Food, Wasted is a documentary series done in partnership with DBS, exploring the reasons why food waste occurs, what some groups are doing about it and offers audiences simple but effective solutions to tackle food waste. To learn more about why we need to work together towards zero food waste and how @DBS is raising awareness on this issue: https://go.dbs.com/2MlqChl ALSO WATCH: - Why so much food is lost before it even gets to us https://youtu.be/Nn6JdjBHJ0o - Can Urban Farming Help Fix Our Broken Relationship With Food? https://youtu.be/Cmh3S9EpvXA For more, SUBSCRIBE to CNA INSIDER! https://cna.asia/insideryoutubesub Follow CNA INSIDER on: Instagram: https://ift.tt/2C3sZiR Facebook: https://ift.tt/2PPEuNA Website: https://cna.asia/cnainsider
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