## Column: The Amount of Food Waste Depends on the Cook’s Environmental Awareness

There is a relationship between the age of the family member who buys/cooks food and takes care of meals at home, and food loss (leftover or dumped portions of edible food) per person per day in household food consumption (except for delicatessens and food cooked outside the household, such as lunch boxes). Food loss increases with the age of the family member responsible for family meals.

More specifically, leftovers (leftover or dumped portions of cooked meals) show no significant difference for all age groups, regardless of ages of family member responsible for food services, or the amount of food consumed.

Direct disposal (foods uncooked and discarded because the expiry date

29 or younger, and 50 or older. This is because people in the former

group are unaccustomed to well-planned food purchase/consumption,

while those in the latter group tend to buy unnecessary foods even after

their family size decreases when their children leave home.

For excessive removal (edible portions that are removed and dumped with bones, peels or other inedible portions in the cooking process including excessive radish peels but excluding inedible portions such as vegetables/fruit peels or fish bones normally discarded), the figure for age 50 or older is twice that for age 49 or younger. This results from two factors: People aged 50 or older consume 20-30% more food because they have more opportunities to have their meals at home; and they consume larger amounts of food where edible portions are likely to be peeled off with inedible portions (e.g., vegetables, fruits, and seafood).

Elderly people are generally believed to have a greater consciousness to carefully use things and avoid wasting food. However, such a belief is not necessarily correct because elderly people actually buy a large amount of food and dump a lot.

Analysts point out that we now have an “open 24 hours” lifestyle in which a segment of the population is active every hour of the day.

Recently, convenience store (CVS) chains, which are synonymous with “open 24 hours,” have significantly expanded their sales networks and floor space. As a result, carbon dioxide emission from CVS chains has increased 310% from 823,000 tonnes in 1990. It has been rising at a much faster pace than that of the corporate and public sectors (up 7.0% from the 1990 level). As this “open 24 hours” lifestyle permeates society, there might be a further increase in these overnight shops.

Although Japan’s population will decrease in the future, changes in household structure or lifestyles will probably push up environmental burdens. Efforts will have to be made to reduce the environmental burdens generated by the activities of our daily lives. For example, “Team Minus 6%,” a nation-wide project calling for reduced greenhouse gases, encourages the following actions: More household-level efforts

Food Loss and Food Loss Ratio by Age Group of Each Family Member Responsible for Family Meals (per Person per Day)

Note: Food loss percentage (\%) = (Food loss/food consumption) $ \times $ 100

Source: Compiled by the Ministry of the Environment based on the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Statistical Survey on Food Waste, 2004 (The General Household Survey).

Retail Industry’s Carbon Dioxide Emissions per Selling Floor Space

Source: Compiled by the Ministry of the Environment based on the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan.

such as “increasing efforts to save energy by spending more time with family members”; reducing containers and packages by employing “Mottainai Furoshiki” intended to encourage the 3R approach. It is important to pay a little more attention to making