According to a recent report by UNEP and WRI, about one-third of all food produced worldwide worth around $1 trillion gets wasted. This means about ?intended for consumption is never consumed. Sweden government, recognizing this problem, questioned if wasted food can turn into something useful – new products, raw materials, gas or heat.

Sweden is taking step by step to solve this problem. Every month 993,000kg of food waste is gathered by the city of Stockholm. The waste is turned into 115,000 m3 of gas, which buses and taxis use as fuel. This is achieved by cooperation of Sweden?s household, which recycles 99 percent of food waste. This was possible because recycling stations are by rule no more than 300m from any household. Majority separates and deposits food waste. Hans Naess, a Swedish food entrepreneur, further explains that this is due to Sweden?s food culture influencing them to have strong conservative way they have to eat everything up, and that in the culture it is very ugly to throw away food.

These food waste recycled produce heat for over 810,000 households and electricity for 25,000 private houses. 2,270,000 tons of food wastes were burnt into energy. Swedish government suggests that waste is a relatively cheap fuel and that Sweden has developed a large capacity and skill in efficient and profitable waste treatment. They even imports waste from other countries.

Another example is city of Malmö?s paper bags. In Malmö, people put food waste into paper bags, each worth of the gas enough to drive a car 2.5 km,  and drop them into a plastic bin downstairs from where they go to make the gas that powers the city's buses. Editor Richard Orange explained that Malmö uses anaerobic digestion carried out by bacteria and other methane producing organisms to produce methane gas. The resulting gas is then purified so it can be used for a fuel. Through this process they were able to make tons of biogas, which they upgrade to natural gas quality.

Credit to: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/27/food-waste-around-world

http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/food_waste_the_facts