News - January 13, 2020
January Focus: Sustainable Food Systems
Written by Tristan Lebleu 3 min read
How can we build a more sustainable and fair food system to feed the planet while preserving our environment?
Fighting climate change is often associated with renewable energy: solar panels, wind turbines, ocean energy…
But there’s one topic we seldom forget to think of: our food system. The truth is that our food system, from production to consumption, contributes massively to climate change.
According to an analysis by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science, food is responsible for approximately ¼ of global greenhouse gas emissions (26%).
Food waste alone encompasses the absurdity of our system: we use energy, land, and water to produce, harvest, transport, or package food, of which one third ends up in landfills, where it decomposes and produces methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. All of this happens while approximately 815 million people still suffer from hunger around the world.
Technology can help us reduce the environmental impact of food, from production to packaging, shipping or consumption: whether it’s applications to reduce food waste, containers to transform food waste into energy, food production processes that reduce energy and water consumption, digital solutions to reduce food losses in shipping…
Solutions to build a more sustainable food system already exist and we are committed to highlighting and supporting them.
In the upcoming weeks, the Solar Impulse Foundation will focus on the topic of food through solution presentations, editorials, interviews, and videos published on our website and social media.
If you have any questions about food production, food waste or other topics related to the food system, please feel free to share or comment on our posts. Our experts will answer directly on social media.
Here are some of the labelled Solar Impulse Efficient Solutions related to food:
Written by Tristan Lebleu on January 13, 2020
