Food
It is estimated that about 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted annually on the global scale , which contributes to a series of negative ecological and social effects.
Reducing the problem of food waste would significantly influence the state of the natural environment and the world's community. Agricultural production is the second producer of greenhouse gases in the world . Reducing food waste, first by decreasing consumption, secondly by reducing the amount of nutritional waste, that produces methane in the decomposition processes, could limit greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The increase in food production that goes hand in hand with high food wastage indicators encourages producers to establish monocultures that negatively affects the diversity of fauna and flora. The lack of management of food waste directly results in growth of unfavorable behavioural patterns among animals and affects the size of their population (by increasing the number of pests and reducing the number of endangered species). For example, 7 billion tons of fishing waste discharged into the seas and oceans annually result, i.a. in an uncontrollable population growth of seagulls.
According to the statistics of the European Commission in Poland, in 2010, about 9,4 million tons of food were wasted. It places us in fifth place in terms of the amount of food wasted per capita in the European Union. Although there are no detailed data on the scale of food waste at various stages of the product life cycle in Poland, data on the entire European Union may bring us closer to the situation in our country. Data for 2012 for all EU countries together indicate that the distribution area is responsible only for 5% of waste measured by the weight of waste and 7% measured by their value . However, relatively more, because 12% of food is wasted in the catering industry. The biggest problem is visible in the case of households responsible for 42% of the weight and 69% of the value of food waste. Currently, a large part of this food goes to landfills, while it could be managed in a more circular way. Whether we change the current state of affairs depends mostly on our awareness and consumer choices we make.