Seven million tons of food waste goes into the dumpster every year in Ukraine, KW wrote with a reference to independent experts some.
Of this volume, 33% are thrown out during the production process, another 33% are dumped by grocery stores and restaurants and the remaining 35-40% are thrown out by Ukrainian households. The main problems of production and trade are ineffective methods of harvesting, weak control and logistics (i.e. transportation and storage).
Tetyana Hetman, Director of the APK-Inform Project: Fruits and Vegetables, says the excess of vegetables and potato yield in 2011/2012 amounted to over 2.2 mn t, including over 1.5 mn t of potatoes on the market and around 0.7 mn t of vegetables of the so-called “borsch set”. “This excess amount of vegetables had to be thrown out into the dumpster, which means approximately UAH 2 bn in direct losses for domestic agricultural companies,” says Hetman.
In addition to that, customers leave up to 20% of the food on their plates in cafes, fast food joints and even high-end restaurants, General Director of Restaurant Consulting Olha Nasonova says. Decorative items in original salads and hot dishes usually remain on the plate, though they are also edible. So, it turns out that ordinary Ukrainians throw out more than Europeans.
All things considered, Ukraine should not expect any major economic progress unless consumers change their attitudes towards foodstuffs, concludes the KW article by Svitlana Popel.
