According to a recent report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), every household in Rwanda wastes 164 kg of food every year while 2,075,405 tonnes of food is wasted at household level per year. The report also estimates in East Africa, Burundi wastes 1,184,127 tons of food, with DRC that wastes 8,912,903 tons of food whereas Kenya wastes 5,217,367 tons of food per household per year. And nearly 570 million tons of food in the world is wasted at the household level. The report states that food waste burdens waste management systems, exacerbates food insecurity, making it a major contributor to the three planetary crises of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. Otto Vianney Muhinda, Assistant Representative at Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said that food loss should be avoided at all levels from harvest, to market distribution and to consumer’s level too as recommendations from food systems summit. “At household level, food is lost through storage, preparation and also after preparation, but these are things that we can find solutions for. For example, we found some hotels in Kigali that waste food that is not consumed in a day, and there was an initiative of re-distributing the unconsumed food to hungry people and this came as a way to reduce food loss while providing for the hungry,” he said. “Consumers are the key people at food waste cycle, and it is the responsibility of every individual to reduce food waste as much as they can, together with key partners we are discussing how consumers can reduce food waste, and this can be done through strategic campaign to create public awareness, sensitize and educate them on how they can reduce it.” Gerard Ruzindana a nutritionist and a head of household said food waste in households comes as a result of poor planning, and it should be everyone’s responsibility to stop food waste in a household. “Every family should identify the dietary requirements, and preferences of everyone in the house, and shop according to that, so that they can avoid shopping for unnecessary food that will go to waste.” He said. “Food waste in household can be avoided by, keeping all the food in cool dry place to stop it from getting wet which might spoil the food, foods like milk, vegetables should not be bought on bulk but rather be bought and consumed every three days because they are easily spoilt” Ruzindana recommends every household to buy food that can be consumed in seven days rather than storing it for a longer period because this leads to wasting food once it goes bad. Statistics from the 2018 Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) showing that 81.3 percent of Rwandas population is food secure. The findings showed that 18.7 per cent of the country’s households, approximately 467,000 households, were found to be food insecure.
