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The World Wastes Tons of Food. A Grocery Happy Hour Is One Answer.
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: September 23rd, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/business/food-waste-clima...
Happy hour at the S-market store in the working-class neighborhood of Vallila happens far from the liquor aisles and isnt exactly convivial. Nobody is here for drinks or a good time. Theyre looking for a steep discount on a slab of pork. Or a chicken, or a salmon fillet, or any of a few hundred items that are hours from their midnight expiration date. Food that is nearly unsellable goes on sale at every one of S-markets 900 stores in Finland, with prices that are already reduced by 30 percent slashed to 60 percent off at exactly 9 p.m. Its part of a two-year campaign to reduce food waste that company executives in this famously bibulous country decided to call happy hour in the hopes of drawing in regulars, like any decent bar. About one-third of the food produced and packaged for human consumption is lost or wasted, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. That equals 1.3 billion tons a year, worth nearly $680 billion. The figures represent more than just a disastrous misallocation of need and want, given that 10 percent of people in the world are chronically undernourished. All that excess food, scientists say, contributes to climate change. Mika Lyytikainen, an S-market vice president, explained that the program simply reduces its losses. When we sell at 60 percent off, we dont earn any money, but we earn more than if the food was given to charity, he said. On the other hand, its now possible for every Finn to buy very cheap food in our stores.
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