South Africa throws away roughly a third of all the food it produces every year, about 10 million tonnes, while millions go hungry. On International Zero Waste Day, the question isn’t whether we have enough food. It’s why so much of it ends up in a landfill instead of on a plate, why we don’t understand the full extent of the issue, and what we can do to change it.
Every year on 30 March, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) marks the International Day of Zero Waste, an annual call to rethink how we produce, consume and manage our resources. This year’s theme, Zero Waste Starts on Your Plate, is aimed squarely at food waste, a “preventable crisis”, said UNEP executive director Inger Andersen.
But food waste isn’t just last night’s leftovers scraped into the bin. It’s the broader category of food that exists in the human supply chain without being eaten – surplus stock dumped at the back of a supermarket, produce ploughed under because it doesn’t meet export specifications, and manufacturers destroying goods close to expiry dates.
Ahead of the day, the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Zero Waste announced its inaugural 20 Cities Towards Zero Waste, a recognition of cities demonstrating ambitious approaches to reducing waste and advancing circular economy solutions. The list spans six continents. Four African cities feature: Accra in Ghana, Kisumu in Kenya, Lilongwe in Malawi and Chefchaouen in Morocco. No South African city is included.
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South Africa’s particular version of the problem
About 10 million tonnes of “mostly edible food” in South Africa is lost or wasted across the value chain,…