SDG 12 – CEFR Level B2 – IELTS Level 5-6
What is Responsible Consumption?
How many zeros are in a 1.3 trillion? Six? Seven? Here’s what 1.3 trillion looks like: 1,300,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros. It’s also the number of kilograms of food that’s wasted each year around the world. It’s shocking to think that anyone on earth should go hungry when there is so much food that is simply thrown away. Humans have become very good at creating products and growing food, but our ability to manage our own waste has not been able to keep up with this progress. A new and growing movement calling for “responsible consumption” is working on ways to solve this issue.
Responsible consumption aims to help sustain our natural environment by increasing the efficiency of how the food and goods we produce are used. Currently, 13.8 percent of all the good grown is wasted as it is harvested, transported and processed, resulting in a loss of over US$400 billion each year. And much of this food is lost simply because it isn’t “pretty” enough to be sold in supermarkets. It’s not that it isn’t healthy — it’s just not good-looking or quite “fresh” enough to be sold. Dealing with this unnecessary waste has led to what has become known as the “ugly food” movement.
In the US, UK and Canada, companies such as the Misfits Market, Odd Box and No Frills have been offering nutritious food that may not be exactly “Instagram-ready,” but perfectly edible and reasonably priced for the last several years. And as food prices go up, more and more people are giving ugly food a second look. Internet searches for Odd Box, for example, increased by more than 300 percent in 2020 alone. Not only are people helping to reduce food waste by buying misshapen fruits and vegetables, they are also saving money at the same time: some retailers, such as Loblaw’s grocery stores in Canada offer ugly vegetables under the brand name, “Naturally Imperfect” for about thirty percent less than the price of their more “pretty” produce.
It’s not just in the West where the ugly food movement is gaining a following, either. A group of Tourism and Hospitality students from Taiwan’s National Chi Nan University worked together to create “Yo Chun Lunch Boxes.” The student-organized program successfully created hundreds of lunchboxes using locally-sourced “ugly” vegetables and their own recipes. The results of their hard work were amazing: in just seven weeks, the students created 447 lunchboxes and raised over NT$31,000 — and that’s a lot of zeros for a good cause. Even more impressively, the students donated the money they collected to local charities. It was truly an inspired program with a very worthwhile outcome.
And what can you do to help responsible consumption? Try to view the food you buy and eat as just that: food! Don’t look simply at it for its appearance; instead, judge it for its nutritional value and its environmental sustainability. Try to cut down on your food waste as much as possible. And don’t forget to do your best and cut down on the plastic packaging that much of our food is sold in as well. By getting ugly, you can help keep the planet beautiful!
If you’d like to learn more, here are links to some of the sources used in this article:
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-consumption-production/
https://motherraw.ca/pages/in-the-news
https://quilt–ai.medium.com/the-ugly-food-movement-is-picking-up-pace-why-693ba91bddae
https://whatcanyoudo.earth/mother-earths-blog/responsible-consumption-and-production/
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/12_Why-It-Matters-2020.pdf
https://eatmagazine.ca/fight-food-waste-eat-ugly-fruits-vegetables/