Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

Publishers Information

About Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

Publisher Web Link: http://books.wwnorton.com/

The true cost of what the global food industry throws away.

With shortages, volatile prices and nearly one billion people hungry, the world has a food problem—or thinks it does. Farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets and consumers in North America and Europe discard up to half of their food—enough to feed all the world’s hungry at least three times over. Forests are destroyed and nearly one tenth of the West’s greenhouse gas emissions are released growing food that will never be eaten. While affluent nations throw away food through neglect, in the developing world crops rot because farmers lack the means to process, store and transport them to market.

But there could be surprisingly painless remedies for what has become one of the world’s most pressing environmental and social problems. Waste traces the problem around the globe from the top to the bottom of the food production chain. Stuart’s journey takes him from the streets of New York to China, Pakistan and Japan and back to his home in England. Introducing us to foraging pigs, potato farmers and food industry CEOs, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy, but also inspiring innovations and ways of making the most of what we have. The journey is a personal one, as Stuart is a dedicated freegan, who has chosen to live off of discarded or self-produced food in order to highlight the global food waste scandal.

Combining front-line investigation with startling new data, Waste shows how the way we live now has created a global food crisis—and what we can do to fix it.

Author Information

About Tristram Stuart

Author Web Link: http://www.tristramstuart.co.uk/

Using a combination of historical insight and front-line investigation into modern food production, Tristram makes regular contributions to academic, television, radio and newspaper debates on the social and environmental aspects of food. His first book, The Bloodless Revolution, ‘a genuinely revelatory contribution to the history of human ideas’ (Daily Telegraph), was published in 2006. His latest book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (Penguin, 2009), winner of one and finalist for three other international prizes, reveals that modern Western countries waste up to half of their food supplies, and that tackling this problem is one of the simplest ways of reducing pressure on the environment and on global food supplies. In the space of just two hours in December 2009, in partnership with FareShare, Save the Children, ActionAid, and This is Rubbish, Tristram and his team fed 5000 people in Trafalgar Square with free hot curry, bicycle-churned smoothies, and three tonnes of fresh groceries, using only ingredients that otherwise would have been wasted. Tristram is senior research associate at the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex and is on the advisory board of the Sustainable Restaurant Association; since the publication of Waste he has been helping NGOs, governments, businesses and institutions in several countries implement reductions in food waste.

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Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

by Tristram Stuart