Nearly 1/3 of all global food goes to waste or is lost due in part to insufficiencies in the transportation and coinciding refrigeration of food. Improved refrigeration could make a large impact on these losses.
"Ideally the cold supply chain is continuous, unbroken, and high quality," says Aaron Friedman-Heiman, a recent master's graduate from the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability. For many foods, cool temperatures are vital when traveling from farms to grocery stores. Rough 83 million metric tons of food waste could be saved given a functional system.
Most deficiencies in the chain are in Africa and Southeast Asian, but a large portion of the food problem in the US can be attributed to food waste due to habitual behavior of people purchasing too much food and/or not eating the food in their fridge before buying more.
Communities can combat individual food waste by eating what they have, not buying more food than they need, and buying locally grown food and practicing a farm-to-table lifestyle.
To learn more visit refred.org and the EPA website.
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