Filthy facts about SA’s food waste
From grower to dump site, 10m tons chucked out yearly
AMESS of congealed porridge, clumps of greying cauliflower and rotting tomatoes ooze from the shredded black garbage bag.
It’s only 10.30am but the bag is one of hundreds spewed up by the endless stream of garbage trucks at South Africa’s biggest landfill site – Robinson Deep in Turffontein.
“Jis, people in this city throw away a lot of food,” says supervisor Alex van Zyl, as he picks through the putrefying contents, unperturbed by the rank odours.
But the worst, he says, are the trucks coming in from the Joburg Fresh Produce Market, every day.
“They bring in truckloads of potatoes, cauliflowers, avos, watermelons … Some is rotten but not all, and it just goes to waste.”
Described as South Africa’s “shameful secret”, a whopping 10 million tons of food is thrown away each year – most of it along the supply chain. Enough to fill six soccer stadiums to the brim.
In 2013, research by the CSIR, revealed this wastage costs South Africa R61.5 billion annually.
“It’s shocking,” says Andy du Plessis, the managing director of FoodForward SA, which collects edible surplus food from manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, redistributing it to 600 registered NPOs, feeding thousands of people daily.
“We get 500 pallets of cereal or 350 pallets of milk from one supplier, but much more than that is dumped into landfills every day,” says Du Plessis. “We need to think creatively how we can redesign the food supply chain so these surpluses can be better dealt with.”
But how, in a country with so many going hungry – more than 14 million people – can we toss so much food in the bin?
Easily, he says – 44% of fruit and vegetables are lost before they even get to the table – and consumers are also to blame.
CSIR research has shown how R21.2bn is wasted by households in the form of food a year.
“You can’t discount the huge amount of waste that takes places in retail stores and in homes. Those who are hungry live in a different sphere from those who don’t see the hidden face of poverty,” he says.
A new report, Food Loss and Waste: Facts and Futures, by environmental group WWF-SA describes as “absurd” that a third of the global food produced is binned.
“Estimates suggest a third of all food here is never consumed and ends up in landfill, adding further pressure to an already overextended waste disposal system. This is in stark contrast to the evidence that millions in urban and rural areas are going hungry.”
But the lack of data on the causes, volumes and hotspots in the food value chain “remains a challenge that requires collective action and reporting transparency”.
This reverberates into the environment, says the WWF-SA. The energy used to grow, process, transport and store wasted food each year could power the City of Joburg for four months. The water guzzled in wasted food production each year could fill over 600 000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
“Given that farming consumes 62% of total freshwater used in South Africa, this is a huge waste of scarce resources in the 30th driest country on earth.”
And almost all waste is disposed to landfills, where potent methane has 36 times more impact on the environment than carbon dioxide over 100 years.
In her research, Dr Nadene Marx-Pienaar from the food retail division at Pretoria University, has found food wastage a “highly sensitive” topic.
“Consumers don’t like telling you that they’re wasting food, and for the industry it’s money down the drain.”
Professor Suzan Oelofse, the research group leader of waste for development, natural resources and environment operating unit at the CSIR, agrees. “The biggest challenge is probably the lack of information on where and how much of what types of food waste is generated and understanding the reasons for the wastage. A lot happens in the pre-consumption stages during packaging and transporting.
“It’s often food that is perfectly safe for consumption that gets discarded because of quality standards that have nothing to do with safety but on appearance.
“Best before, expiry, sell by and use by are causing confusion and waste at consumer level.
“And contrary to expectation, poor households also waste food. When considering most of the population is poor, this is a huge concern that needs to be addressed.”
Christo Rheede, the deputy executive director of Agri-SA, says there is huge pressure on farmers to comply with international standards, which causes wastage. “We need to be more open-minded about what we do with these products. Should they go to waste? Or should we sell them at lower prices or donate to needy communities. What we urgently need is a national strategy.”
When it comes to valuing food, Pavitray Pillay, the head of the SA Sustainable Seafood Initiative, would like to emulate her grandmother, Thayanayagee, who lived through the flu epidemic, both World Wars and apartheid.
“She fearlessly fed the Treason trialists in 1957 on meagre donations. Nelson Mandela described her as one of the brightest culinary stars he knew.
“Growing up, she would regale me with wartime stories; where her family of eight was rationed two cubes of sugar, 400g of flour and two eggs per week. She lived through a time of great scarcity, so she valued everything and wasted nothing.”
But when Pillay opens her fridge, she feels ashamed by the “fuzzy, furry-looking fruit and vegetables staring back at her”.
Our relationship with food seems to have changed, she says. “Our current food system is flawed and filled with absurdities, our wastage is colossal and we haemorrhage food throughout the supply chain.
“We talk about heritage, of which food is a part, and yet we in South Africa waste 210kg of food per person per year.”
The scary thing about food waste is how much of it we don’t see. “When last did you buy a sandwich that was made with the end slice of the loaf ? Where do those go? Maybe we should be turning our bread ends into scrumptious bread and butter pudding for our 3.3 million children who go hungry to school.”
Then, there’s our “obsession” with perfect food. “If you want reasons for waste,” says Marx-Pienaar, it’s over-purchasing, compliance to health ideals, wrong storage and the obsession with perfect fruit and veg.
“We believe, especially among more wealthy income groups, that we’ve worked hard for our money and we’re entitled to blemish-free perfect products, we want our apples red and shiny with all the frills.
“Some retailers are starting to test the waters with ugly fruit, but won’t change until customers do.
Pillay says acknowledging the crisis is key. “We need to recognise that we have a food waste problem.
“We must change our relationship with and attitude to food, back to valuing everything and wasting nothing.
“Luckily many of us don’t have to survive on wartime rations for now, or stretch our pantries to feed freedom fighters, but six stadiums filled with wasted food suggests that we need to become ‘food waste fighters’.”
Long live leftovers, long live, Pillay says.