Fines Imposed for Wasting Food in South Korea

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers conducted a study in 2013 and came up with reports stating, 50% of all food produced in the world ends up in waste. Varied reasons were identified such as inadequate infrastructure and storage facilities, overly strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one-free offers and consumers' demand for cosmetically perfect food.

Consequently, food is the number one product found in U.S. landfills. A study in 2012 shows that 35 million tons of foods were wasted in the U.S. considering the fact that one of six Americans doesn't have access to a sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food. If wasted food were a country, it would just be behind U.S. and China as producer of greenhouse emissions, a 2013 UN study states.

So to answer this global dilemma, Korea has come up with pay-by-weight food waste management program. The idea is to make consumers feel the pinch in their pockets - the more you toss out, the more you pay - and thus create an incentive to generate less waste. Almost 145,000 people from South Korea are participating in the program. The state-run Korea Environment Corp. has deployed automated canisters at apartment buildings around the neighborhood. Residents open the hatch using ID cards, and the canister weighs the food waste then transmits the total to the local government. Exceed the allotted weigh then you pay a fine. Restaurant owners are forced to reduce food waste especially during food preparation and to donate leftovers to charitable institutions.

The effect of this program has been remarkable, with food waste down by 30 percent in the neighborhood. The challenge now is to implement the program in a much larger scale like in the U.S.

Other countries have also responded to this global concern. For instance, France now bans grocery stores from throwing away or destroying unsold food. They have to donate the food for use as animal feed or compost instead. This is a start but only 11 percent of food waste comes from grocery stores. They also need to come up with a way to address food waste at home and in restaurants. In fact, almost all of the countries need to formulate a program like that of Korea to reduce food waste.