England – Households around the world waste more than a billion meals every day, in poor and rich countries alike, while more than 783 million people around the world suffer from hunger.
About a fifth of food is wasted, sometimes due to waste or poor planning, and sometimes due to lack of access to refrigeration or storage, according to the United Nations Food Waste Index report, published yesterday, Wednesday, at a global cost of about one trillion dollars annually.
Households are responsible for most of the world’s food waste, with approximately 60% of the food wasted annually. But commercial food systems are also a big contributor, with food services accounting for 28% of waste, and retail about 12% in 2022, the most recent data available.
In addition, 13% of global food is lost through the food supply chain from farm to market. In total, about a third of food is wasted during the production process.
Not only does this waste waste natural resources, it is also a major contributor to the climate and biodiversity crises, accounting for about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Food production requires resource-intensive, huge amounts of land and water, and food systems are responsible for about a third of global emissions that warm the planet.
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, who wrote the report in conjunction with the UK’s Waste and Resources Action Program (Wrap), described food waste as a “global tragedy”, compared to the fact that a third of people face food insecurity.
According to the report, few countries have plans to reduce food waste, and most fail to include it in their proposals to reduce carbon emissions.
The United Nations now has reliable data from more than 100 countries, which has enabled researchers to say with certainty that food waste is a global problem that affects developing countries as well as the profligate rich world.
More food appears to be thrown away in hot countries, perhaps reflecting the shorter time it takes for food to spoil at higher temperatures, lack of access to refrigeration, and increased consumption of fresh food containing inedible parts.
Poor families also tend to throw away food at a rate not much lower than families with higher incomes. On average, they are responsible for about 7 kg of waste per person per year, less than the wealthiest families.
This may reflect many factors, including lack of access to proper refrigeration and storage, reliance on lower quality foods, and lack of time to prepare nutritious meals.
Worldwide, about 79 kg of food is wasted per person annually. But in some countries, including the UK, Australia, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa, food waste has been cut significantly since 2007. Japan also reduced food waste by about a third, and the UK by about 18%.
Source: The Guardian
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2024-03-28 12:42:33