For a self-proclaimed ‘food haven’ that imports more than 90% of its food resources, we do not seem to appreciate our food as much as we should.

According to National Environmental Agency (NEA) Statistics released this March, an astonishing record of 796,000 tonnes of food waste has been generated in 2013. Of which, only a mere 13% was recycled.

What do these numbers mean?

It means that we have thrown away the equivalent of 1420 fully loaded Airbus A380s worth of food just last year! It has been estimated that each individual wasted 0.36kg of food daily, which totals up to 129.6kg of food in a year. That is much heavier than an average adult giant panda!

It does not comfort to realise that there has been a 13.2% increase of food waste from the 703,200 tonnes dumped in 2012 — the sharpest spike in at least six years. Since roughly S$80,000 is required to recycle 1 tonne of food waste daily, it would have cost us almost S$64 billion to recycle all the food that we’ve thrown down the rubbish chute last year.