The Enormous Scale Of Global Food Waste

As more than one trillion U.S. dollars worth of food is thrown away each year, up to 783 million people are affected by hunger. At the same time, food waste generates an estimated 8-10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and takes up the equivalent of nearly 30 percent of the world’s agricultural land. These are just some of the findings published in the United Nations Environment Programme's Food Waste Report 2024.

The UNEP estimates that in 2022, the world produced 1.05 billion tonnes of food waste across the retail, food service and household sectors. The average amount of food waste per capita that year is estimated to be 132 kg, of which 79 kg was household waste. This equates to roughly 19 percent of food available to consumers being wasted across the retail, food services and household levels. This is a problem seen across all levels of society, reflected in how the figure for household waste is broadly similar across country income groups at 81 kg per capita for high income, 88 kg per capita for upper middle, 86 kg for lower-mid income, while there was insufficient data for lower income countries.

When looking at the data on a country-by-country basis, the highest absolute figures for food waste were recorded in the two countries with populations of more than a billion people. China wastes an estimated 108.7 million tonnes of food per year while India discards 78.1 million tonnes. The United States creates 24.7 million tonnes of food waste annually, while in Europe, France and Germany produce between 3.9 and 6.5 million tonnes per year.

Things look rather different when it comes to waste produced per capita. For example, the average household in India discards 55 kg of food per year while for the United States the figure is 73 kg. By comparison, Russia's total household waste comes to an estimated 4.8 million tonnes each year with waste per capita only coming to 33 kg.