Transporting Food Creates More Waste Than You Can Imagine

The sheer amount of food waste should shock us into action, the statistics around how much food each household wastes alone are staggering. Scientists continue to study the background of the problem we are facing from its root causes up to the formation of feasible solutions.?

When we first read various academic studies, we were astounded by how much fresh produce is lost to damage during transportation from the farm to the plate. Not only that but there is also a huge investment in packaging to solve the problem. We do believe you need a mix of solutions to the problem of food waste right at the top of the supply chain. Moreover, growing some items in your own building is part of the solution, and environmentally friendly packaging that reduces transportation waste is another.?

Post-harvest loss is just one of the major problems that the world is facing today, greatly concerning food security and sustainability. To give you a clearer understanding of post-harvest loss, it is the occurrence of food loss from the harvesting stage, storage, and transportation, up to the retail or food service procurement stage. The quality and the quantity of the food deteriorates, adding to the current percentage of food waste. The most common challenge regarding this issue occurs in the transportation stage where fresh produce faces mechanical damage due to vibration.?

To be able to grasp the issue in a different light, teams from Oman, Nigeria, and South Africa conducted a study regarding this.?

The mechanical damage that fresh produce is afflicted with can be reckoned as a source of economic loss due to the reduced food quality and can further result in extreme food safety concerns for the consumers.? As mentioned, the vibration that occurs in transit is what mostly causes the damage to the fresh produce. Therefore, the team recognized the transportation stage as an important factor in the supply chain that can help them thoroughly review the said bad effects. Now, when it comes to formulating strategies intended for reducing the losses, it is important to strongly investigate each factor that causes such damage to fresh produce during the transportation stage.?

The main factors that were identified to be the most influential when it comes to the mechanical damage to fresh produce are the surface condition, vehicle speed, vibration duration, vibration direction, packaging unit, and more. The article also states that the vibration during transit is unavoidable. To address this or to somehow reduce the adverse effects, it is strongly suggested to have good management practices. For example, improving refrigeration systems, making use of appropriate packaging, and integrating suitable cushioning materials.??

As you’d expect, we’d prefer that people just stopped transporting things they can grow sustainably in their buildings, homes, and offices.? Not everything can be grown like this – but so much can!?

We agree that a holistic approach is needed because fresher tastes better and more than anything we know that is what consumers care about most.?

Experimental approaches to measure the levels of vibration during the transit of fresh produce as well as a comprehensive explanation of the effects of packing materials, placement of the products on the vehicle, and the height of the package in a stack are discussed in the article. To know more about this, you can read the full article here.?

Reference?

Al-Dairi, M., Pathare, P. B., Al-Yahyai, R., & Opara, U. L. (2022). Mechanical damage of fresh produce in postharvest transportation: Current status and future prospects. Trends in Food Science & Technology.?