Did you know that in 2018 alone, Singapore had 763,100 tonne of food waste? That is the total weight of about 42,000 double-decker buses.
To manage the increasing amounts of waste in Singapore, The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) designated 2019 as the Year towards Zero Waste. The Zero Waste Masterplan will cover three waste streams: E-waste, Packaging waste and Food Waste.
In his National Day Rally 2019, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (PM Lee) also touched on the huge amounts of waste generated by Singapore - from excessive packaging to food waste. With increased concern from the Government, there is a need for businesses to step up and join hands to help reduce food wastage in Singapore.
What is Food Wastage?
According to the United Nations, food waste is the discarding of food that is safe and nutritious for human consumption. Food wastage may result from various activities - such as cosmetic filtering of produce to meet consumers’ standards, due to the ease of throwing food away and oversupply due to the inability to predict consumer demand.
It’s an “Instagram World”
“Ugly food”, or food that are just not as aesthetically appealing, are often thrown away as they are not presentable enough to be sold to consumers.
Efforts to reduce the waste of ugly food has been made. Large corporations such as FairPrice where it is donated to Food from the Heart and Food Bank and to raise awareness of how ugly food are still as good, “Feeding the 5,000”, an event feeding 5000 members of the public using these ugly food has been executed in 2018.
Just Bin it.
With no penalty in Singapore, it is easy to throw food away instead of doing through the hassle of donating it. To ease the process of donating food, the Government has initiatives to place community fridge at void decks for residents to leave food they do not need and for the needy neighbours to take it.
For businesses, some restaurants are starting to become more open towards donating extra food left at their buffet to beneficiaries.
But here comes the dilemma for restaurants’ owners - do you overproduce then donate or should you produce at the right amount?
More is more.
Customer satisfaction is key. Customers expect a full buffet line when they pay up to $90 for a buffet meal. Hence, to prevent this, restaurants tend to overproduce their food so that they can keep their customers happy. But these are all done at the expense of increased food waste.
The first step to reducing food waste, is to first know what is being wasted and why. Could it be due to error in production? Too much fire causing burnt food? Or is the item not popular with customers?
If it is too much of a hassle for you to keep track of everything while running the business? Our Smart Food Waste Tracker is able to seamlessly measure, track and identify all waste that is being thrown away. Get insights on your wastage to reduce your food waste and cost, and do your part for environment sustainability!
