Wastage of food

A widely quoted figure of one third of all food available for human consumption lost or wasted is made up of both food lost before it reaches the consumer and food wasted once it arrives in the kitchen. If 25% of the food currently being lost or wasted globally was saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million people around the world.

Food waste alone generates about 8%-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The further along the supply chain the food loss occurs, the more carbon intensive the loss and waste. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitting country in the world behind China and the USA.

Dutch research, using data from the FAO, World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) and published in 2020 in the journal Plos One, suggests every person in the world is wasting over 500 calories of food a day (not including food lost in the production process before it gets to the consumer). Food waste is more of a problem in richer countries; and starts to rise above a daily income of about seven dollars per day.

Around 88 million tons of food waste are generated annually in the EU. This is equal to 174 kg per person or €143 billion or 170,000,000 tons of CO2.

Around 931 million tons of food waste were generated in 2019. 61% came from households, 26% from food service and 13% from retail.

In 1998, the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture estimated that around 14 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in Brazil. In financial terms this is around US$ 4 billion per annum in fruit, greens, vegetables and other perishable food. Specifically 10-15% of oranges are wasted; 30% of vegetables and peppers; 30% of grains; 21% of rice; 25% of chicken; 15.8% of tubers and 75% of milk. Another 20% of corn, soy beans and other beans are spoilt due to errors in the operation of agricultural machinery; the grains rot in warehouses due to excessive humidity and because they are stored in sacks and other unsuitable packaging. Contributing to food wastage are: householders throw out 20% of certain foods, such as skins and leaves with high nutritional value; restaurant customers leave 20% of the food they order; badly-planned packaging accounts for 30% of road transport insurance claims for damaged food; the retail trade buys more food than needed, taking into account losses in stocking and exhibition of produce. In the case of bananas, the retailer offers 1.66 kg for each kilo sold which, added to the 20% lost in production accounts for a wastage of almost 60%; the same happens with avocados, tomatoes and papayas, with an estimated wastage of 40% in the total amount of fruit produced in Brazil.