Every year, households, retailers and food services waste enough food to satisfy the hunger of the world’s malnourished at least twice over. Whether or not you like statistics, the imagery used in TASTE THE WASTE speaks volumes. Valentin Thurn’s documentary asks why civilised societies throw away so much food, and how we can stop, or at least offset, the effects of our shameful waste.
It’s not just about supermarket wheelie bins full of fresh food – taking a broader view, the water used to irrigate food destined for the dump, and the fuel used to transport it around the globe, all contributes to the cumulative waste. TASTE THE WASTE takes us around the world, illustrating the scale of the issue not just with grotesque foodscapes but with anecdotal evidence. Veronique, who works in a Parisian foodbank, comes from a village in Cameroon which is in such a state of poverty that its families can’t afford to buy any of the bananas they grow and export. Most of these bananas will end up on a dumpster on the other side of the world. This kind of story transcends waste – it’s an act of perversity.
10% of rich countries’ greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten.
We see examples of good practice as well as bad – Japanese farmers feed their pigs on processed food waste, which is illegal under European law. We see an interview with a European Commission executive who explains the strict cosmetic criteria for our food. It’s not just bent carrots and cucumbers that are left to rot in the field – an otherwise picture-perfect apple which measures under 55mm in diameter is not considered fit for human consumption. Meanwhile, in the North Atlantic and the North Sea, European fish are killed and returned to the sea simply because they are an arbitrarily unpopular species, or because of the badly governed European quota system.
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This isn’t just one of those “oh dear” documentaries that send you home vowing to buy a bruised banana – it’s a call to arms, demonstrating the slow but steady steps that are already being taken – waste researchers have succeeded in instigating round-table discussions for farmers and food industry officials, and there are some shining examples of innovation and ingenuity – one supermarket bakery recycles its bread glut and mixes it with the wood pellets used to heat the ovens. Dumpster divers, researchers, supermarket managers, food charities and farmers are working together to mitigate waste, but TASTE THE WASTE reminds us that this is a problem which lies literally on the doorstep of each member of Western society.
TASTE THE WASTE screens today at 4pm at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse as part of the 2012 UK Green Film Festival.
Quoted food waste fact is from Tristram Stuart’s Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (Penguin, 2009).