12 Sep 2025, By Fatih Segmen | Editor: Deren Sanivar
On a divided island in the east Mediterranean, the Cypriot people complain like clockwork every year “This summer is going to be the hottest ever recorded”. Farmers chatter in the distance, “I remember when we used to flood our fields with water, they used to warn us that we should be more careful. We didn’t listen, now we are left waiting for our crops to grow from the drops of water left in our tanks”. On this island, even water follows different paths. In some regions, it flows down from the mountains; in others, it arrives through pipes that span the sea. Access depends on geography, history, and politics, but the rising heat and growing scarcity are shared by all. Either way the concerns for the future are shared. The heat knows no boundaries turning everything it touches dry and crisp, slowly transforming concrete city blocks into grand ovens. It leaves the people questioning. Will the cyclamens still bloom, the donkeys graze and the sage still grow? When will we live peacefully with the land?
For years, which you and I cannot count that far back, Cypriots lived in a symbiotic relationship with their land. Mother nature shaped our culture, allowing the locals to get creative with recipes when times were tough, utilising what was available. This gave us the beautiful dishes of Τραχανάς / Tarhana soup, Κολοκοτές / Kabak böreği pastry and many others. Fast forward to today and we see a big shift of the island’s relationship with food.
A large chunk of our island’s economy relies on development and urbanisation. This means open buffets, feasts and a fast-paced consumption lifestyle for temporary pleasure. But how does this effect our connection with food? An exploratory case study done by Demetriou, 2022, investigates hotel food waste in Limassol, showing that the hospitality sectors competitiveness contributes heavily to food waste in the field (1). This accompanied by a lack in a “food waste reduction” approach to legislation and policies made is resulting in a gap where action cannot be taken. This drastic systematic shift in the way we experience food is more detrimental than we think.
How is food waste connected to the climate crisis in the first place you ask? Project Drawdown, a nonprofit organization that aims to compile realistic and bold solutions to climate change, self-described as “trusted, science-based, and independent guide for effective climate action across the globe”, proposed 87 solutions to reduce heat- trapping gases as an effective way to mitigate the effects of climate change (2). When we take a closer look at the top of this list, we can find the most effective points of action. “Reduced Food Waste” ranks at number one followed by “Plant-Rich Diets” in second place. They estimate that reducing food waste could help us avoid 88.50–102.20 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2050.
Well, if food waste reduction is so impactful, then how do we go about tackling it? That brings us to Scherhaufer et al 2018, researchers who studied the environmental impacts of food waste in Europe (3). They discovered that food waste emissions are influenced more by supply chain emissions, and the type of food wasted (meat and dairy causing most impact), rather than by the impact of its treatment and disposal. This means that food waste prevention is the key to the issue, particularly in the primary production step! A secondary “band-aid” like step is to tackle food waste prevention at household level. The reason being is that the impacts food waste has at the consumer stage include all the accumulated impacts from earlier stages of the supply chain. That squishy tomato is not just a squishy tomato anymore and carries a heavy carbon tag with it!
We must also keep in mind that food waste is not only accompanied by greenhouse gas emissions. The water exploitation index plus (WEI+) is a tool used to compare total water use against renewable water resources (4). WEI+ is an indicator for water scarcity and is expressed as a percentage. Values greater than 20% are considered a sign of water scarcity, while values larger than 40% indicate severe water scarcity. In the year 2000 Cyprus was scored at 59.5% and in 2022 jumped to a concerningly high 71% placing it at number one in unsustainable use of freshwater resources. Comparing this to the EU average of only 5.8%, really sets off some emergency bells on how we are utilising fresh water in both domestic and agricultural use in Cyprus.
So there we have it, the problem is out in the open. There are as many solutions to the climate crisis as there are threads in a Lefkara / Λευκαρίτικα lace. A circular economy approach allows us to view waste as a resource and utilise the by-products of every step of the production chain. Other approaches are bolder, suggesting a systems-change that adopts a degrowth mindset, decentering the idea that economic growth, with its detrimental effect that slowly makes our world uninhabitable for the masses, is exponential and everlasting. Degrowth proposes a cut-off point that allows for the prioritisation of social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over- production and excess consumption (5).
We need inclusive, all-encompassing, intersectional change, and we need it now. So, I will leave you with some food for thought. If Aphrodite were born in the 21st century, would she donate her hair to an oil spill relief effort? Do we wish to see the days where the only oil spilled is the ones from amphoras carrying our century-old olives? Will the babutsa/ παπουτσόσυκο stand strong in the face of ever- increasing temperature rise we, humans, have caused? Will the figs be there for our children to eat or will the honey that drips from them be just a memory?
References
1. Demetriou P. Hotel food waste in Cyprus: An exploratory case study of hotels in Limassol. Sacco PL, editor. Cogent Social Sciences. 2022 Jan 31;8(1).
2. Project Drawdown. Table of Solutions [Internet]. Project Drawdown. 2020. Available from: https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions
3. Scherhaufer S, Moates G, Hartikainen H, Waldron K, Obersteiner G. Environmental impacts of food waste in Europe. Waste Management. 2018 Jul;77(77):98–113.
4. Eurostat. Is water scarce in the EU? [Internet]. @EU_Eurostat. Eurostat; 2025 [cited 2025 Apr 2]. Available from: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/w/edn-20250321-1
5. Degrowth [Internet]. Degrowth. 2022. Available from: https://degrowth.info/degrowth
Fatih Segmen
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