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Choosing and consuming: Sustainability key to Indonesia’s food waste problem
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W
ith the increased focus on sustainability in recent times, a greener, more responsible way of living starts as small as the food on your plate.
Yet before getting into personal dietary preferences and picky eaters, Indonesia has a massive issue with food loss and waste.
A recent report by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) found that the country threw away 23 to 48 million tons of food waste annually from 2000 to 2019, equivalent to 115 to 184 kilograms per capita per year. These losses occur across all stages of the supply chain and consumption, including processing, storage, transportation and consumer wastage.
The report also found that food waste resulted in a loss of approximately Rp 213 trillion to Rp 551 trillion per year, equivalent to 4 to 5 percent of Indonesia’s GDP. At the same time, the energy loss from food waste was enough to provide one meal to 61 million to 125 million people per year.
Certainly, these findings are staggering, yet there is hope that Indonesia can turn its situation around.
National Development Planning Minister Suharso Monarfa, who is also the head of Bappenas, highlighted the importance of transforming global food security in order to achieve the country’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a point raised during the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit in September.
“This transformation has become more important today, as we face a convergence of crises. Based on Indonesia’s latest SDG voluntary national review [VNR], COVID-19 has influenced our past positive trends, with one of the many issues we face being food loss and waste management,” he said during his keynote speech at the 37th JakPost Up Close webinar.
According to Suharso, undernourishment became an increasing trend from 2019 to 2020, and triple-burden malnutrition was a major issue in the country’s food security development, contributing to stunting in children under 5 years old.
Food and nutrition policy expert Drajat Martianto noted that one out of 12 Indonesians was undernourished based on calorie intake. While increasing food production and availability was an important step, he continued, issues such as water availability and climate change could hinder these efforts.
“Efficiency in production, processing, distribution and consumption is therefore very important in increasing food availability,” he said.
To rectify Indonesia’s food waste problem, Drajat identified five main strategic directions, which included behavioral changes, improved support for food systems, stronger regulations and optimized funding, utilization of food loss and waste and further development of related studies.
On the topic of food waste utilization, Eva Bachtiar, CEO and cofounder of food bank Garda Pangan, pointed to Garda Pangan’s tagline: “Why bin it if you can feed people in need?”.
Since its start in 2017, Garda Pangan has “rescued” more than 183,000 portions of food going to waste, saving around 43 tons of potential food waste by distributing meals to more than 127,000 beneficiaries.
“What hits me the most is that food waste is also ironic as 90.4 million people in Indonesia still struggle for food every day and go to bed hungry. What came to my mind was, ‘Why don’t we bridge the gap between those with the food surplus and those who need it the most?’,” she said.
The most preferable action for food recovery, Eva said, was to start at the top, which meant reducing the amount of food waste from the production source, followed by donating still edible food to people in need. If the food was no longer edible, the next best thing would be for industrial use and composting, with incineration at landfills at the lowest possible priority level.
On an industrial level, Danone Indonesia VP General Secretary Vera Galuh Sugijanto explained that the company was committed to food security in Indonesia through its products, which are readily accessible and sustainably produced and marketed.
Danone Indonesia currently runs 26 factories across the country, serving more than 1 million consumers nationally. AQUA, its flagship bottled water brand, has over 70 percent circular packaging, meaning that its original packaging can be reused.
Sustainability is at the heart of the company’s operations, best exemplified in the Danone Indonesia-AQUA #BijakBerplastik movement. The campaign runs on three main pillars, which are collection, education and innovation. Through #BijakBerplastik, by 2025, Danone Indonesia aims to collect more plastic waste than it produces, to reach 5 million children through programs and 100 million consumers through education campaigns and to have their products’ packaging be 100 percent recyclable.
As part of the Green Office program, Danone Indonesia invites employees to separate their waste based on type, which is managed in partnership with Waste4Change.
A culture of waste management is central to the company’s day-to-day operations, as just in September 2021 alone, more than 2,100 kilograms of waste were collected in its head office.
Some 21 percent of this was organic waste, which was then processed into compost and for the cultivation of Black Soldier Fly larvae. Inorganic waste, which made up 54 percent of the total waste in September, was distributed to the recycling industry to be made into new products. Meanwhile, the remaining 25 percent of residual waste was used as fuel for cement industry co-processing.
“I think this data can also connect with our behavior in terms of consumption. When you see organic waste, it’s something that we need to address, such as how we can consume food responsibly. If there is any residual waste, we must know how to manage it so that is doesn’t go into the landfill,” she said.
To engage on a community level, Danone Indonesia runs the Waste Bank program, focusing on waste management in households as well as developing community nutrition gardens so that families are able to have easy access to nutritious food.
In terms of educational programs, Danone Indonesia currently runs a number of programs, including Isi Piringku, which promotes healthy lifestyles and a balanced diet for children aged 4 to 6 through teachers and parents; Gerakan Ayo Minum Air (Let’s Drink Water Movement), which promotes the habit of drinking seven to eight glasses of water per day for schoolchildren; Warung Anak Sehat, which trains school canteen workers to provide healthy snacks and drinks for students; and GESID, which builds health and nutritional understanding and awareness for young people.
“At Danone Indonesia, we try not only to address food waste and food loss but also ensure the affordability and accessibility of nutritious products and healthy hydration for our consumers. This helps contribute to a sustainable business model that helps the Indonesian environment, which will help the health of the Indonesian people,” she said.
“We all have a role to play. We can choose and consume our food wisely and make this beautiful country a much cleaner and healthier place for us to live – and, of course, for generations to come.”
