Donna Mae Alaga 
“Pagpag” which is an act of repurposing food scrap from establishments have long been feeding the empty stomachs of those below the poverty line and since then become the saturated topic of documentaries in an attempt to sway the public sentiment towards being grateful of what they have and avoid wasting the food they eat.
The adage “isang kahig, isang tuka” of generation-long struggle to cope with starvation brought by scarcity of resources in impoverished families cannot be overemphasized and has been an oft-repeated reality still unresolved up to this day. According to the Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA), 2.7 million of the 13.5 million economically poor families have been involuntarily hungry at least once in the past three months.
As an issue, it is as alarming as the growing concern on food wastage. Food researchers particularly Barion et. al claimed that food is not only lost at the consumption stage but in production stages as well, specifically due to poor post-handling practices during storage handling and transport. Which leave us bamboozled to how much food is unknowingly wasted, let alone consistently recorded by the PSA. Unfortunately, an estimate made by Melo-Rajik (2021) calculates 308,000 tons of rice being wasted by Filipinos every year. What happened to “rice is life”?
This month of April, let us foster initiatives to stop the deteriorating issue on food wastage. For community-wide efforts, we could equip ourselves of food wastage management framework akin to that of Marikina City.
Individually, we could start purchasing ‘smart’ such as buying seemingly ‘ugly’ food products that are nevertheless safe for consumption. That means buying what is only enough of what we actually need to avoid excess food products ravishing our refrigerators or food storage enclosures.
In a broad sense, we should start consuming less, not to deprive ourselves of the right to eat, but to understand that though we are exponentially increasing our demand from our environment, its resources are finite. Thus, we should be more conscious of what we consume instead of merely hoarding food items that will only reach landfills in the end due to our negligence.
May we do food wastage practices everyday, not only during its month of commemoration. Segregate food waste from other types and encourage composting. It can even be distributed or sold to farmers who need them in sowing crops. Devise repurposing ideas, especially not the one in the beginning of this caption, to convert a not yet food waste into new, consumable, fulfilling staple on your daily meals.
