Buying ‘funny fruit’ will help feed the world, UN says

Make a shopping list and buy “funny fruit” to cut food waste and help the world “shape a sustainable future”, two UN agencies urged on Tuesday.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and partners unveiled a campaign dubbed Think-Eat-Save Reduce Your Foodprint to change global practices that result in the loss of 1.3 billion tonnes of food each year.

The programme is aimed primarily at consumers, food retailers and the hotel and restaurant industry, and is based on three recommended actions: think, eat, and save.

“In a world of seven billion people, set to grow to nine billion by 2050, wasting food makes no sense – economically, environmentally and ethically,” a statement quoted UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP executive director Achim Steiner as saying.

“We’re doing something that is completely irrational,” he lamented to reporters in Geneva, before adding that he hoped the campaign would “literally mobilise tens of millions of people to become part of the solution.”

FAO director general Jose Graziano da Silva pointed out that in industrialised nations, about 300 million tonnes of food are wasted each year, “because producers, retailers and consumers discard food that is still fit for consumption”.