8 Billion Dollars in Food. Trashed

Source: www.abc.net.au/btn/story This is a documentary regarding the food wastage in Australia. Based on statistical data, Australians throw away 8 billion dollars of food annually and sadly, all that food is going to the garbage bins. Each year, the average home disposes of more than $1000 worth of food. The most heart-breaking fact is that 33 % of the junk food is still fresh, while 27% is derived from leftover food at restaurant. Apparently, the problem today is that much food, fruit, and vegetable that has small blemishes is not wanted by the consumer although it is still very good to eat. Fortunately, there is OzHarvest, an organization which claims to fix two issues at once- food wastage and poverty. They collect still-fresh food, fruit, and vegetable from supermarkets or dinner parties on a daily basis for free. Their mission is to grab as much of this good quality waste food, and deliver it to hungry people on the street or donate it to certain community centres. In my opinion, as in Australia, food wastage is also becoming an issue in Indonesia. The lifestyle of consumerism has made people ignore everything in their life. In reality, the more modern supermarkets and restaurants that exist in the country, the more fresh food is wasted and more money is unnecessarily discarded. This is a paradoxical situation as the majority of Indonesian citizens are still facing the problem of poverty and hunger, while at the same time, the rich and the middle class are wasting food for their own greed. It can be argued that the solution should come from each individual who must be aware of the importance of food by eating food only sufficient amounts or donating it to poor people if they have a surplus of food. LFN