19th April –卯月
In the world, around 1,300,000,000 ton of food wastes have been produced in 2018. It’s one thirds of whole food production (4,000,000,000 ton).
Food loss, the edible food which are thrown away from home, businesses (such as scraps, left overs) -has been such a huge problem in the entire world. This issue is one of the closest matters for everybody, however not many people think about it seriously.
The data revealed in 2019 shows that every year 6,430,000 ton of food which were edible have thrown away in Japan. This means Japanese population waste 51kg of food per person each year.
Japan ranked 6th worst country in food waste amount in the world. It’s the worst top among all Asian countries! What a dishonorable fact.
The amount of food wastes in Japanese food businesses were 19,700,000 ton in 2019. In most cases, those were not only the scraps and inedible parts but also returns from customers, unsold food. Many food businesses in Japan choose throwing away them rather than recycling, as the cost for recycling is higher than just wasting them.
While many people in Japan haven’t really notice about this problem, some considerable people have invented apps which can help food loss issue.
‘TABETE’ is the app which can help the business to sell the unsold food. Businesses can post their unsold food on this app, then the public users can purchase them with cheaper price! This create win-win situation for business and customer. Business can reduce the food waste and customer can get it for cheaper price, therefore public are willing to use this app.
Another similar app called ‘rebake’ is focused on bakery. Everyday, the unsold breads from bakeries country wide are posted so customers do not need to visit the other prefecture to get them but just order online and get delivery.
Furthermore, some restaurants recommend customers to follow the 3010運動 (3010 Undou= 3010 movement). This means that if dining outside with friends, people should order what they can finish and have the time to focus on eating as well as to chat. So, this movement recommends the first 30 minutes and the last 10 minutes is for eating food. By doing this, people will not order too much food at the end.
もったいない – Mottainai = too good to waste. Japan has this specific word not to waste things, but ironically we waste too much food. By knowing some of the fact, I hope more people will consider about food loss and produce the least waste!
The first step for this is, order what you can finish and reduce left over amount!
Little Japan Dictionary 