From the stories of the old: An Islamic Perspective to the Global Food Waste Problem

Ashraf Akintola

It is high time humanity learnt that food production is not limited to the illusion of going to the market and getting all your groceries; rather, it is one among the numerous anchors that hold our ecosystem in place. This ambience of equilibrium is a sacred ingredient to make the world inhabitable. A tilt in this balance spells doom for all and sundry. Before what is to us an immense blessing turns into a curse, we can, irrespective of our differences reflect on what needs to be done to salvage the planet from ruins.

Food waste or loss is food that mankind set out to work for but are not eaten. In 2019 alone, an estimated 931 million tonnes of food were wasted globally. This amount, when analyzed is enough to go around the 7 Billion inhabitants of the earth seven times. This waste or loss occurs throughout the food system- from the production to processing, distribution, retail until it gets to our table. However, it is shocking that 61 per cent of this loss came from households, 26 per cent from foodservice and 13 per cent came from retail. This problem becomes even more egregious when we realize that food wastage has become a culture. In fact, we consider it fancy when we go to restaurants or public functions to leave a considerable amount of our food as leftovers.

From the stories of old, we learnt how the prophet Yusuf (alayhi salam) saved millions of souls from famine by interpreting the dream of the king. Putting that in the context of our world, we might be edging closer to the end of the seven years of harvest that made the people of Egypt the saviour of the whole humanity. The irony is, rather than storing the foods in this season of plenty, more are ending up in the garbage trucks than up in silos even though we know that drought and famine are on the corner. Among the questions, we might never get enough answers to can be inferred from why human beings love to work against their souls. We labour from dawn to dusk tilling the land for its bounties and when it is time to reap from our labours, we throw away our harvest to the dump.

Most of us do not recognize the crisis we have found ourselves.  In 15 years, our estimated global population is expected to increase from Seven Billion to Nine Billion. if we keep up this food wastage spree as it is presently, then by 2050, there would be a massive worldwide food shortage. The problem lies not in not producing enough but the amount that turns to the garbage each day. 

Apart from the uneven distribution of food across the globe with certain parts in dire need of food and water and the other wallowing in excesses, food waste also burdens waste management systems, exacerbates food insecurity, and thus remains a major contributor to the three planetary crises of climate change- nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. For all intent and purpose, what seems benign and trivial to so many as food waste results in damning consequences and we have been repeatedly warned against it in Islam.

That being said, don’t be too surprised when you are told that of the 931 million tonnes of food waste, about 40 million originates from the Arab world! How can we free ourselves of this menace? How do we curb these excesses and make the best use of our planet’s resources? Well, maybe its time to wake up from our slumber and act!

Among the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 12.3), a major focus is to halve food waste and reduce food loss by 2030. With several kinds of machinery put in place through comprehensive food waste data collection, analysis and modelling to date, generating a new estimate of global food waste as well as a methodology for countries to measure food waste, at household, foodservice and retail level, in order to track national progress towards 2030; the world keeps moving in the direction pointed out to us by Allah and our beloved prophet more than a thousand years ago.

Islam has offered us an easy answer to reducing food waste, making food waste an abominable offence, dissuaded us from excessive extravagance, making charity better than show-off and taught us that gluttony is a form of waste and a precursor of diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Allah told us in the Quran that we should eat from the fruits of the earth, give to the poor out of our harvest and prevent waste(Quran 6:141) and he does not love extravagance (Quran7:31).

Abu Hurayrah (May Allah be pleased with him) reported that Allah’s Messenger (Peace be upon him) said, “When one of you eats, he must lick his fingers (after finishing), for he does not know in which of them lies blessing” (Sahih al Muslim, Jami Tirmidhi) to show us not to let go of any part of our food. To add to that, Sayyidina Jabir (May Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) said; “When one of you eats his meal and a morsel falls, he must pick it up and remove the doubtful portion and eat the rest. He must not leave it for the devil.”(Jami’ Tirmidhi) for “Verily spendthrifts are brothers of the Shaytaan, and the Shaytaan is to his Lord, ungrateful.” (Quran17:27). Such is the abhorrence and hatred of wastage in the sight of Allah to the extent that he declared the wasters and the spendthrifts as the ‘brothers’ of the Shaytaan who is ever ungrateful to the Lord!

If it is at a social function, Ramadan iftar, wedding walimah or any gathering, every Muslim has to ensure that this form of abominable acts of food wastage become alien to our practices. Islam came to make us whole in our spiritual and mundane life and as this is deeply ingrained in our religious dictates, we owe it to ourselves and to the world to make this world a better place to be.