Illustrations by Boizei MalicdemThe numbers are devastating—an estimated 2,175 tons of food scraps end up in trash bins on a daily basis in Metro Manila. Filipinos waste 308,000 tons of rice every year, and on a global scale, 1/3 of the food produced globally every year never reaches our plates.
“It is imperative to have a baseline data. You can’t solve a problem without really measuring how much is wasted, and industries cannot value what was lost if they do not analyze the numbers. Wasting food is wasting money, resources, effort spent on producing food, and most importantly, it has environmental impact, specifically the amount greenhouses gases it contributes.
Juan stresses that always serving fresh food is one of the best ways for small enterprises to lessen their food wastage. “It’s okay to run out of stock, as long as you give options to customers,” she says. “Like for salads, we offer different greens, and not just one kind, so they have choices. The ‘ugly’ vegetables contain the same vitamins as pretty ones, so the ‘ugly’ vegetables are made into our Mean Green juice.