The global food waste scandal
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0:01 - 0:04The job of uncovering the global food waste scandal
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0:04 - 0:07started for me when I was 15 years old.
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0:07 - 0:09I bought some pigs. I was living in Sussex.
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0:09 - 0:12And I started to feed them in the most traditional
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0:12 - 0:14and environmentally friendly way.
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0:14 - 0:16I went to my school kitchen, and I said,
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0:16 - 0:17"Give me the scraps that my school friends have turned
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0:17 - 0:18their noses up at."
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0:18 - 0:21I went to the local baker and took their stale bread.
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0:21 - 0:24I went to the local greengrocer, and I went to a farmer
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0:24 - 0:26who was throwing away potatoes because they were
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0:26 - 0:29the wrong shape or size for supermarkets.
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0:29 - 0:32This was great. My pigs turned that food waste
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0:32 - 0:35into delicious pork. I sold that pork
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0:35 - 0:36to my school friends' parents, and I made
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0:36 - 0:41a good pocket money addition to my teenage allowance.
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0:41 - 0:44But I noticed that most of the food that I was giving my pigs
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0:44 - 0:46was in fact fit for human consumption,
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0:46 - 0:49and that I was only scratching the surface,
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0:49 - 0:52and that right the way up the food supply chain,
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0:52 - 0:55in supermarkets, greengrocers, bakers, in our homes,
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0:55 - 0:58in factories and farms, we were hemorrhaging out food.
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0:58 - 1:01Supermarkets didn't even want to talk to me
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1:01 - 1:02about how much food they were wasting.
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1:02 - 1:04I'd been round the back. I'd seen bins full of food
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1:04 - 1:07being locked and then trucked off to landfill sites,
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1:07 - 1:10and I thought, surely there is something more sensible
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1:10 - 1:13to do with food than waste it.
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1:13 - 1:16One morning, when I was feeding my pigs,
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1:16 - 1:19I noticed a particularly tasty-looking sun-dried tomato loaf
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1:19 - 1:21that used to crop up from time to time.
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1:21 - 1:23I grabbed hold of it,
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1:23 - 1:26sat down, and ate my breakfast with my pigs. (Laughter)
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1:26 - 1:30That was the first act of what I later learned to call freeganism,
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1:30 - 1:34really an exhibition of the injustice of food waste,
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1:34 - 1:36and the provision of the solution to food waste,
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1:36 - 1:39which is simply to sit down and eat food,
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1:39 - 1:40rather than throwing it away.
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1:40 - 1:44That became, as it were, a way of confronting
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1:44 - 1:47large businesses in the business of wasting food,
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1:47 - 1:49and exposing, most importantly, to the public,
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1:49 - 1:51that when we're talking about food being thrown away,
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1:51 - 1:53we're not talking about rotten stuff, we're not talking about
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1:53 - 1:56stuff that's beyond the pale.
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1:56 - 1:58We're talking about good, fresh food that is being wasted
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1:58 - 2:01on a colossal scale.
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2:01 - 2:03Eventually, I set about writing my book,
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2:03 - 2:05really to demonstrate the extent of this problem
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2:05 - 2:08on a global scale. What this shows is
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2:08 - 2:12a nation-by-nation breakdown of the likely level
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2:12 - 2:15of food waste in each country in the world.
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2:15 - 2:19Unfortunately, empirical data, good, hard stats, don't exist,
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2:19 - 2:21and therefore to prove my point, I first of all had to find
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2:21 - 2:23some proxy way of uncovering
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2:23 - 2:25how much food was being wasted.
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2:25 - 2:28So I took the food supply of every single country
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2:28 - 2:31and I compared it to what was actually likely
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2:31 - 2:33to be being consumed in each country.
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2:33 - 2:37That's based on diet intake surveys, it's based on
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2:37 - 2:40levels of obesity, it's based on a range of factors
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2:40 - 2:41that gives you an approximate guess
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2:41 - 2:44as to how much food is actually going into people's mouths.
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2:44 - 2:47That black line in the middle of that table
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2:47 - 2:50is the likely level of consumption
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2:50 - 2:54with an allowance for certain levels of inevitable waste.
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2:54 - 2:56There will always be waste. I'm not that unrealistic
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2:56 - 2:58that I think we can live in a waste-free world.
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2:58 - 3:02But that black line shows what a food supply should be
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3:02 - 3:06in a country if they allow for a good, stable, secure,
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3:06 - 3:10nutritional diet for every person in that country.
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3:10 - 3:13Any dot above that line, and you'll quickly notice that
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3:13 - 3:15that includes most countries in the world,
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3:15 - 3:20represents unnecessary surplus, and is likely to reflect
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3:20 - 3:22levels of waste in each country.
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3:22 - 3:26As a country gets richer, it invests more and more
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3:26 - 3:27in getting more and more surplus
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3:27 - 3:30into its shops and restaurants,
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3:30 - 3:32and as you can see, most European
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3:32 - 3:33and North American countries
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3:33 - 3:36fall between 150 and 200 percent
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3:36 - 3:40of the nutritional requirements of their populations.
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3:40 - 3:42So a country like America has twice as much food
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3:42 - 3:45on its shop shelves and in its restaurants
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3:45 - 3:48than is actually required to feed the American people.
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3:48 - 3:50But the thing that really struck me,
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3:50 - 3:54when I plotted all this data, and it was a lot of numbers,
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3:54 - 3:58was that you can see how it levels off.
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3:58 - 4:01Countries rapidly shoot towards that 150 mark,
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4:01 - 4:04and then they level off, and they don't really go on rising
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4:04 - 4:06as you might expect.
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4:06 - 4:08So I decided to unpack that data a little bit further
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4:08 - 4:10to see if that was true or false.
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4:10 - 4:12And that's what I came up with.
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4:12 - 4:14If you include not just the food that ends up
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4:14 - 4:16in shops and restaurants, but also the food
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4:16 - 4:18that people feed to livestock,
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4:18 - 4:22the maize, the soy, the wheat, that humans could eat
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4:22 - 4:24but choose to fatten livestock instead to produce
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4:24 - 4:26increasing amounts of meat and dairy products,
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4:26 - 4:28what you find is that most rich countries
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4:28 - 4:32have between three and four times the amount of food
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4:32 - 4:35that their population needs to feed itself.
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4:35 - 4:38A country like America has four times the amount of food
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4:38 - 4:41that it needs.
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4:41 - 4:44When people talk about the need to increase global
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4:44 - 4:47food production to feed those nine billion people
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4:47 - 4:49that are expected on the planet by 2050,
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4:49 - 4:51I always think of these graphs.
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4:51 - 4:54The fact is, we have an enormous buffer
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4:54 - 4:58in rich countries between ourselves and hunger.
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4:58 - 5:03We've never had such gargantuan surpluses before.
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5:03 - 5:05In many ways, this is a great success story
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5:05 - 5:09of human civilization, of the agricultural surpluses
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5:09 - 5:13that we set out to achieve 12,000 years ago.
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5:13 - 5:16It is a success story. It has been a success story.
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5:16 - 5:19But what we have to recognize now is that we are
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5:19 - 5:23reaching the ecological limits that our planet can bear,
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5:23 - 5:25and when we chop down forests, as we are every day,
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5:25 - 5:27to grow more and more food,
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5:27 - 5:30when we extract water from depleting water reserves,
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5:30 - 5:34when we emit fossil fuel emissions in the quest
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5:34 - 5:35to grow more and more food,
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5:35 - 5:38and then we throw away so much of it,
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5:38 - 5:41we have to think about what we can start saving.
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5:41 - 5:44And yesterday, I went to one of the local supermarkets
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5:44 - 5:47that I often visit to
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5:47 - 5:51inspect, if you like, what they're throwing away.
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5:51 - 5:53I found quite a few packets of biscuits amongst
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5:53 - 5:55all the fruit and vegetables and everything else
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5:55 - 5:56that was in there.
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5:56 - 5:58And I thought, well this could serve as a symbol for today.
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5:58 - 6:01So I want you to imagine that these nine biscuits
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6:01 - 6:04that I found in the bin represent the global food supply,
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6:04 - 6:06okay? We start out with nine.
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6:06 - 6:09That's what's in fields around the world every single year.
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6:09 - 6:11The first biscuit we're going to lose
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6:11 - 6:13before we even leave the farm.
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6:13 - 6:16That's a problem primarily associated with
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6:16 - 6:18developing work agriculture, whether it's
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6:18 - 6:20a lack of infrastructure, refrigeration, pasteurization,
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6:20 - 6:23grain stores, even basic fruit crates, which means
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6:23 - 6:27that food goes to waste before it even leaves the fields.
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6:27 - 6:30The next three biscuits are the foods that we decide
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6:30 - 6:34to feed to livestock, the maize, the wheat and the soya.
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6:34 - 6:39Unfortunately, our beasts are inefficient animals,
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6:39 - 6:43and they turn two-thirds of that into feces and heat,
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6:43 - 6:46so we've lost those two, and we've only kept this one
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6:46 - 6:48in meat and dairy products.
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6:48 - 6:52Two more we're going to throw away directly into bins.
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6:52 - 6:53This is what most of us think of when we think
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6:53 - 6:56of food waste, what ends up in the garbage,
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6:56 - 6:58what ends up in supermarket bins,
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6:58 - 7:00what ends up in restaurant bins. We've lost another two,
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7:00 - 7:04and we've left ourselves with just four biscuits to feed on.
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7:04 - 7:08That is not a superlatively efficient use of global resources,
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7:08 - 7:10especially when you think of the billion hungry people
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7:10 - 7:12that exist already in the world.
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7:12 - 7:14Having gone through the data, I then needed
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7:14 - 7:18to demonstrate where that food ends up.
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7:18 - 7:20Where does it end up? We're used to seeing the stuff
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7:20 - 7:22on our plates, but what about all the stuff
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7:22 - 7:24that goes missing in between?
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7:24 - 7:26Supermarkets are an easy place to start.
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7:26 - 7:29This is the result of my hobby,
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7:29 - 7:33which is unofficial bin inspections. (Laughter)
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7:33 - 7:36Strange you might think, but if we could rely on corporations
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7:36 - 7:39to tell us what they were doing in the back of their stores,
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7:39 - 7:41we wouldn't need to go sneaking around the back,
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7:41 - 7:44opening up bins and having a look at what's inside.
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7:44 - 7:46But this is what you can see more or less on
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7:46 - 7:49every street corner in Britain, in Europe, in North America.
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7:49 - 7:52It represents a colossal waste of food,
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7:52 - 7:55but what I discovered whilst I was writing my book
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7:55 - 7:58was that this very evident abundance of waste
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7:58 - 8:01was actually the tip of the iceberg.
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8:01 - 8:03When you start going up the supply chain,
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8:03 - 8:06you find where the real food waste is happening
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8:06 - 8:08on a gargantuan scale.
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8:08 - 8:10Can I have a show of hands
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8:10 - 8:14if you have a loaf of sliced bread in your house?
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8:14 - 8:16Who lives in a household where that crust --
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8:16 - 8:19that slice at the first and last end of each loaf --
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8:19 - 8:22who lives in a household where it does get eaten?
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8:22 - 8:24Okay, most people, not everyone, but most people,
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8:24 - 8:26and this is, I'm glad to say, what I see across the world,
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8:26 - 8:29and yet has anyone seen a supermarket or sandwich shop
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8:29 - 8:31anywhere in the world that serves sandwiches
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8:31 - 8:33with crusts on it? (Laughter)
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8:33 - 8:35I certainly haven't.
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8:35 - 8:40So I kept on thinking, where do those crusts go? (Laughter)
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8:40 - 8:42This is the answer, unfortunately:
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8:42 - 8:4413,000 slices of fresh bread coming out of
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8:44 - 8:50this one single factory every single day, day-fresh bread.
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8:50 - 8:51In the same year that I visited this factory,
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8:51 - 8:56I went to Pakistan, where people in 2008 were going hungry
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8:56 - 8:59as a result of a squeeze on global food supplies.
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8:59 - 9:02We contribute to that squeeze
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9:02 - 9:05by depositing food in bins here in Britain
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9:05 - 9:07and elsewhere in the world. We take food
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9:07 - 9:10off the market shelves that hungry people depend on.
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9:10 - 9:12Go one step up, and you get to farmers,
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9:12 - 9:15who throw away sometimes a third or even more
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9:15 - 9:17of their harvest because of cosmetic standards.
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9:17 - 9:20This farmer, for example, has invested 16,000 pounds
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9:20 - 9:23in growing spinach, not one leaf of which he harvested,
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9:23 - 9:25because there was a little bit of grass growing in amongst it.
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9:25 - 9:28Potatoes that are cosmetically imperfect,
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9:28 - 9:30all going for pigs.
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9:30 - 9:34Parsnips that are too small for supermarket specifications,
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9:34 - 9:36tomatoes in Tenerife,
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9:36 - 9:37oranges in Florida,
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9:37 - 9:40bananas in Ecuador, where I visited last year,
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9:40 - 9:43all being discarded. This is one day's waste
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9:43 - 9:45from one banana plantation in Ecuador.
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9:45 - 9:48All being discarded, perfectly edible,
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9:48 - 9:50because they're the wrong shape or size.
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9:50 - 9:52If we do that to fruit and vegetables,
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9:52 - 9:54you bet we can do it to animals too.
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9:54 - 9:57Liver, lungs, heads, tails,
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9:57 - 9:59kidneys, testicles,
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9:59 - 10:01all of these things which are traditional,
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10:01 - 10:04delicious and nutritious parts of our gastronomy
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10:04 - 10:07go to waste. Offal consumption has halved
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10:07 - 10:10in Britain and America in the last 30 years.
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10:10 - 10:12As a result, this stuff gets fed to dogs at best,
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10:12 - 10:14or is incinerated.
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10:14 - 10:18This man, in Kashgar, Xinjiang province, in Western China,
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10:18 - 10:20is serving up his national dish.
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10:20 - 10:22It's called sheep's organs.
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10:22 - 10:23It's delicious, it's nutritious,
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10:23 - 10:26and as I learned when I went to Kashgar,
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10:26 - 10:29it symbolizes their taboo against food waste.
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10:29 - 10:31I was sitting in a roadside cafe.
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10:31 - 10:34A chef came to talk to me, I finished my bowl,
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10:34 - 10:35and halfway through the conversation, he stopped talking
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10:35 - 10:38and he started frowning into my bowl.
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10:38 - 10:40I thought, "My goodness, what taboo have I broken?
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10:40 - 10:41How have I insulted my host?"
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10:41 - 10:43He pointed at three grains of rice
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10:43 - 10:47at the bottom of my bowl, and he said, "Clean." (Laughter)
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10:47 - 10:49I thought, "My God, you know, I go around the world
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10:49 - 10:51telling people to stop wasting food.
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10:51 - 10:56This guy has thrashed me at my own game." (Laughter)
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10:56 - 10:59But it gave me faith. It gave me faith that we, the people,
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10:59 - 11:04do have the power to stop this tragic waste of resources
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11:04 - 11:06if we regard it as socially unacceptable
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11:06 - 11:08to waste food on a colossal scale,
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11:08 - 11:10if we make noise about it, tell corporations about it,
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11:10 - 11:13tell governments we want to see an end to food waste,
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11:13 - 11:15we do have the power to bring about that change.
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11:15 - 11:18Fish, 40 to 60 percent of European fish
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11:18 - 11:21are discarded at sea, they don't even get landed.
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11:21 - 11:24In our homes, we've lost touch with food.
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11:24 - 11:27This is an experiment I did on three lettuces.
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11:27 - 11:29Who keeps lettuces in their fridge?
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11:29 - 11:33Most people. The one on the left
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11:33 - 11:34was kept in a fridge for 10 days.
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11:34 - 11:37The one in the middle, on my kitchen table. Not much difference.
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11:37 - 11:39The one on the right I treated like cut flowers.
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11:39 - 11:41It's a living organism, cut the slice off,
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11:41 - 11:43stuck it in a vase of water,
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11:43 - 11:46it was all right for another two weeks after this.
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11:46 - 11:48Some food waste, as I said at the beginning,
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11:48 - 11:50will inevitably arise, so the question is,
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11:50 - 11:52what is the best thing to do with it?
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11:52 - 11:54I answered that question when I was 15.
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11:54 - 11:59In fact, humans answered that question 6,000 years ago:
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11:59 - 12:02We domesticated pigs
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12:02 - 12:04to turn food waste back into food.
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12:04 - 12:08And yet, in Europe, that practice has become illegal
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12:08 - 12:11since 2001 as a result of the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
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12:11 - 12:13It's unscientific. It's unnecessary.
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12:13 - 12:16If you cook food for pigs, just as if
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12:16 - 12:19you cook food for humans, it is rendered safe.
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12:19 - 12:21It's also a massive saving of resources.
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12:21 - 12:24At the moment, Europe depends on importing
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12:24 - 12:26millions of tons of soy from South America,
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12:26 - 12:29where its production contributes to global warming,
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12:29 - 12:31to deforestation, to biodiversity loss,
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12:31 - 12:34to feed livestock here in Europe.
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12:34 - 12:36At the same time we throw away millions of tons
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12:36 - 12:39of food waste which we could and should be feeding them.
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12:39 - 12:42If we did that, and fed it to pigs, we would save
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12:42 - 12:45that amount of carbon.
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12:45 - 12:48If we feed our food waste which is the current
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12:48 - 12:50government favorite way of getting rid of food waste,
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12:50 - 12:53to anaerobic digestion, which turns food waste
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12:53 - 12:55into gas to produce electricity,
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12:55 - 12:59you save a paltry 448 kilograms of carbon dioxide
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12:59 - 13:01per ton of food waste. It's much better to feed it to pigs.
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13:01 - 13:05We knew that during the war. (Laughter)
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13:05 - 13:09A silver lining: It has kicked off globally,
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13:09 - 13:11the quest to tackle food waste.
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13:11 - 13:15Feeding the 5,000 is an event I first organized in 2009.
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13:15 - 13:17We fed 5,000 people all on food that otherwise
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13:17 - 13:18would have been wasted.
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13:18 - 13:20Since then, it's happened again in London,
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13:20 - 13:23it's happening internationally, and across the country.
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13:23 - 13:25It's a way of organizations coming together
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13:25 - 13:29to celebrate food, to say the best thing to do with food
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13:29 - 13:31is to eat and enjoy it, and to stop wasting it.
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13:31 - 13:34For the sake of the planet we live on,
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13:34 - 13:37for the sake of our children,
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13:37 - 13:39for the sake of all the other
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13:39 - 13:41organisms that share our planet with us,
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13:41 - 13:44we are a terrestrial animal, and we depend on our land
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13:44 - 13:47for food. At the moment, we are trashing our land
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13:47 - 13:50to grow food that no one eats.
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13:50 - 13:53Stop wasting food. Thank you very much. (Applause)
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13:53 - 13:55(Applause)
- Title:
- The global food waste scandal
- Speaker:
- Tristram Stuart
- Description:
-
Western countries throw out nearly half of their food, not because it’s inedible -- but because it doesn’t look appealing. Tristram Stuart delves into the shocking data of wasted food, calling for a more responsible use of global resources.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 14:15
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for The global food waste scandal | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for The global food waste scandal | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for The global food waste scandal | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for The global food waste scandal | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for The global food waste scandal | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for The global food waste scandal | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |