Live more, Waste less: Why Are We Throwing Away Perfectly Edible Food? | Food, Wasted 1/3
Every day, perfectly edible food is thrown away by the tonnes for not meeting beauty standards, amongst other reasons. This wastage occurs even before the food reaches our dinner tables, and is fueled by consumer choices and preferences.
Social enterprises like Treedots and Treatsure, both supported by DBS Foundation, are doing their part to reduce food waste by seeking out businesses and consumers willing to buy ‘ugly’ or surplus food.
The first episode of Food, Wasted, a documentary series produced by CNA in partnership with DBS, explores the reasons why food waste occurs, what some businesses are doing to tackle this issue, and how you can be a part of the solution.
Live more, Waste less: Why So Much Food Is Lost In The Supply Chain | Food, Wasted 2/3
Up to a whopping 40% of food gets lost along the supply chain post-harvest, during handling, storage and transportation - never making it to the shops at all.
In Indonesia, the amount of fruits and vegetables that gets damaged after harvesting goes up to 50%. Poor handling, long travel distances in bad weather, and bad storage practices are the main contributers to the huge losses.
Social enterprises like S4S technologies, which is supported by the DBS Foundation, have set out to prevent food loss with solar conduction dryers that take out the moisture from perishable food and extends their shelf life. But what other innovative technologies can we rely on to reduce spoilage?
In the second episode of Food, Wasted, CNA and DBS explores what other solutions there are to prevent wastage in every step of the supply chain, and what can we, as consumers, do to help.
Live more, Waste less: Can Urban Farming Fix Our Broken Relationship With Food? | Food, Wasted 3/3
Consumers now are spoiled for choice with supermarkets and grocery delivery apps growing in popularity and abundance. With a few taps on the phone, fresh vegetables and fruits can be delivered to one's door in mere hours.
On the flip side, it makes us completely removed from the food growing process and unaware of how much energy and resources it takes to grow, harvest and transport produce so that it makes it to our dinner tables.
Some groups are looking to urban farming to rebuild our relationships with food. Rooftop Republic in Hong Kong transforms empty spaces on top of office buildings to farms well-stocked with chillies and eggplants.
In Singapore, Edible Garden City uses urban spaces to grow produce for consumption. Both social enterprises work with DBS Foundation to champion the Grow Your Own Food movement.
The third episode of Food, Wasted, produced by CNA in partnership with DBS, looks at how these social enterprises and some home farmers are taking matters into their own hands (literally) to tackle food waste. Learn More
S'pore F&B firms work on reducing food waste and disposables amid surge in deliveries
Calls to change eating habits and overhaul food supply chain to cut Singapore's food waste
Along with the race to ramp up local food production aggressively amid battling the Covid-19 pandemic comes another tough nut to crack: the massive amount of food waste generated by the Republic every year.
Food waste is one of the biggest waste streams in Singapore, and 40% is generated by the commercial and industrial sectors that handle fish, other seafood and vegetables.
Fruit and vegetables top the list of food waste in Singapore, making up almost half of that generated by the commercial and industrial sectors that handle fish, other seafood and fruit and vegetables.
How two Singapore homes turned minimising food waste into a habit
More than 26,000 tonnes of unconsumed food worth $342 million are thrown away by households every year because the food wasn't stored or handled properly, or was bought without thinking.
The amount of food waste generated in Singapore has risen by about 20% over the past 10 years and is expected to increase with the growing population and economic activity. Yet only 18% of the total food waste was recycled last year, according to the NEA.
As interest in urban farming and edible gardens grow, National Parks Board (NParks) has launched the Gardening with Edibles initiative — jointly supported by founding partners DBS Bank and Tote Board through the Garden City Fund — as part of a larger effort to strengthen community well-being.
Ms Yap, who is studying urban agriculture at Republic Polytechnic, first took up the part-time job in a cafe as a service crew member in 2015. The amount of food tossed away during the preparation process and discarded at the end of each day disturbed her.
For many of us, our relationship with food has probably changed quite a bit during this pandemic. Perhaps you have picked up cooking as you stay home to stay safe. With little experience with preparing your own meals, the inexperienced cooks among us might have ended up overbuying, overestimating the amount needed to prepare a dish or preparing more food than can be finished.
These Singaporeans are growing their own crops as an additional source of fresh produce
During the circuit breaker period, music teacher Sylvia Chua has been supplementing her meals with crops she cultivates in the community garden near her home in Marine Parade.
Once a bustling hotspot for people to gather and enjoy meals, many coffee shops are now quiet and empty. The Covid-19 pandemic has left stall owners worrying over how to pay for their rent, utility, food ingredients and manpower as they see fewer customers.
Get ready to broc & roll: this easy pasta dish uses the whole broccoli
For home chefs looking for new and easy dishes to whip up, this broccoli and mushroom pasta dish makes for a scrumptious meal for the whole family. Better yet, it makes use of the whole broccoli, so you don’t have to throw the stems away.
Since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, restrictions on dining in at restaurants and shortages in ingredients have changed many young Singaporeans' relationship with food. Some, having no prior experience with cooking, have dipped their toes into the world of culinary arts, while others have taken the chance to change their dietary habits.
How food waste can be reduced at restaurants, food courts and coffee shops
Food and beverage businesses are trying to survive in a challenging climate. As they face a sharp decline in demand, they are also dealing with a disrupted food supply system.
How to minimise food loss during storage and transportation
While the Covid-19 pandemic has cast a spotlight on the massive amounts of food that have gone to waste globally, farms, importers, distributors and retailers have been coming up with ways to reduce food loss even before the outbreak. Here’s a look at how food is lost during storage and transportation, and how some businesses are tackling this.
Chinese New Year is usually the best sales season for premium blood oranges from Hubei province. Considered one of the tastiest mandarin oranges in China and viewed as lucky due to its red pulp, the fruit is harvested between December and March every year.
But a lockdown of the Chinese province on Jan 23 threw things into disarray. A staggering 4,500 tonnes of oranges — enough to fill 170 shipping containers — were left unsold in Hubei’s Enshi City, an area known for growing this variety of the citrus fruit.
Seventy-two-year-old plumber Yee Sheng Kheong has seen the number of customers dwindle since social distancing measures were implemented in February to stem the spread of the coronavirus.
“I used to go out and work every day when I get calls for plumbing jobs, but now I don’t go out of the house anymore, which means I’m not earning,” says the sole breadwinner.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that about a third of the food the world produces annually is lost or wasted before it reaches the market, due to problems ranging from the lack of proper post-harvest storage, processing or transportation facilities.
The unfolding Covid-19 pandemic and measures to curb the spread of the virus have exacerbated the food waste problem in many parts of the world. Labour shortages and logistic bottlenecks resulting from border closures, lockdowns and trade disruptions have disrupted the harvesting, processing and transportation of food supplies. The crisis has thrown into sharp relief the need to rethink existing farming and food systems.
5 things you can do to boost Singapore's collective food security
The Covid-19 pandemic has cast a spotlight on the issue of food security worldwide, including Singapore. An important step to boosting Singapore’s resilience against any supply shocks is reducing food wastage. Here’s what you can do to help boost Singapore’s food security.
Singapore has over the years taken steps to boost its food security. It has worked with nations around the world to diversify its food import sources, maintain a national stockpile, and is continuously looking to technology and research to boost local production.
Today, its food imports come from more than 170 countries and regions. Here’s a look at where some of Singapore’s food is imported from.
The Covid-19 pandemic has cast a spotlight on the issue of food security worldwide, including Singapore.
Thanks to various strategies put in place over the years, our city state is the world’s most food secure nation, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Food Security Index 2019. Nonetheless, Singapore, which imports more than 90 per cent of its food, remains susceptible to factors that threaten global agricultural production.
Crushed egg shells, used coffee grounds and spoilt uncooked vegetables - such ingredients are repurposed as compost for the crops grown at One Farrer Hotel's rooftop farm.
This "self-contained system" makes effective use of what is usually discarded as food waste.
With the amount of food wastage almost doubling over the last 10 years in Singapore, it's time for serious intervention.
TreeDots aims to reduce food wastage by creating a platform to link businesses with unsold inventory to potential buyers and prevent perfectly edible food from ending up in the bin.
This social enterprise wants to ensure the fish we eat doesn’t cost our environment
What is the true cost of that fish on your plate?
When fish farms are not sustainable – a host of environmental challenges ensue. Pesticides and antibiotics used might end up released into the environment; large amounts of fish waste can pollute and deplete oxygen from the water; coastal habitats might be destroyed to build these farms.
UglyFood: transforming imperfection into wholesomeness
Have you heard of "cosmetic filtering"?
You may have been guilty of it in the past, when you chose a bunch of kai Ian over another just because it looked prettier or greener, or perhaps it had less "holes". Almost all of us have done so, at some point.
The battle of the food waste bulge — why you should throw away less food
With Singapore having declared 2019 as the Year Towards Zero Waste, TODAY’s new four-part Trash Talk series examines the issue of waste management and how Singaporeans can do our part to reduce waste. In the final instalment, we look at the burgeoning problem of food waste here, and the innovative ways to tackle it.
