Covid is call to act on Southeast Asia’s food waste crisis: Experts

SINGAPORE — Covid-19 is a wake-up call that’s highlighted the urgency to fight the world’s food waste crisis, experts and industry players told CNBC.

Amid global lockdowns and halted travel, the pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities of supply networks, as disruptions created bottlenecks in farm labor, transport and logistics and sparked global food shortages and price hikes.

“The pandemic is a very good wake-up call,” said William Chen, director of the Food Science and Technology Program at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“Before Covid-19, people took climate change less seriously because food came by easily. But now this issue starts to surface in people’s minds,” he added. “I don’t see it as a lost cause, but a good opportunity to do a house-cleaning of the current system.”

Food waste remains one of the biggest global challenges.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that one third of all food produced — or 1.3 billion tonnes — ends up lost or wasted every year. Food waste also accounts for 8% to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, another UN report showed.

Reducing food waste could yield $700 billion in savings, according to Boston Consulting Group. And businesses in Southeast Asia are jumping on the bandwagon and going into food waste prevention, as well as redistribution and recycling of excess food.

In 2020, Singapore generated 665,000 tonnes of food waste, making up about 11% of the total waste generated in Singapore.  

Coming out of the pandemic, more hotels and airlines are now tackling food waste and putting sustainability “front and center” on their priority list, said Rayner Loi, co-founder and chief executive of Singapore-based AI food waste management start-up, Lumitics.

This was a stark change from a few years back when food waste was “barely on the radar” and it was “incredibly challenging” to have conversations with industry players, said Loi.

The growing receptiveness is thanks in part to increased education, new government regulations and sustainability being high on the corporate agenda, he said.

The firm developed an artificial intelligence-powered tracker installed in dustbins to measure and track all food waste. By learning in real time what and how much food waste was generated, chefs could take action to reduce the amount produced for certain dishes on the buffet line.

This reduces food waste by up to 40%, and food costs by up to 8%, Lumitics found.

From 2024 onwards, owners and occupiers of commercial and industrial premises in Singapore that generate large amounts of food will be required to segregate their food waste for treatment, according to a new legislation.

Lumitics partners large hotel chains like Accor, Hyatt, Marina Bay Sands, as well as carriers such as Singapore Airlines and Etihad Airways.

It plans to expand to 1,000 locations in the next five years across Asia-Pacific starting with Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.

“The entire industry is starting to wake up to this idea that food waste is one of the…