More than 1bn meals thrown away daily while 730m people live in hunger

Food supplies being distributed to a camp in Ethiopia in 2022. Globally, about a fifth of food is wasted, the latest UN Food Waste Index report shows. Picture: Claire Nevill/WFP via AP

Wed, 27 Mar, 2024 - 19:00

Fiona Harvey

More than 1bn meals are thrown away every day, in poor countries as well as rich ones, despite more than 730m people living in hunger around the world.

About a fifth of food is wasted, sometimes through profligacy or poor planning, sometimes from a lack of access to refrigeration or storage, at a global cost of about $1tn a year, shows the UN Food Waste Index report published yesterday.

Households are responsible for most of the world’s food waste — about 60% of the 1bn tonnes of food thrown away annually.

However, commercial food systems are also a substantial contributor, with food services accounting for 28% of waste and retail for about 12% in 2022 — the latest data available.

These figures exclude an additional 13% of food that is lost in the food supply chain, between harvest and market, often from rejection or spoilage of edible food.

Not only is this waste squandering natural resources, it is also a big contributor to the climate and biodiversity crises, accounting for close to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions and displacing wildlife from intensive farming, as more than a quarter of the world’s agricultural land is given over to the production of food that is subsequently wasted.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, which wrote the report in conjunction with Britain’s Waste and Resources Action Programme, described food waste as “a global tragedy”, and contrasted this with the fact that a third of people face food insecurity.

“Millions will go hungry today as food is wasted across the world,” said Ms Andersen.

Not only is this a major development issue, but the impacts of such unnecessary waste are causing substantial costs to the climate and nature.”

The UN now has reliable data from more than 100 countries, which has enabled researchers to say with certainty that food waste is a global problem, afflicting developing countries as well as the profligate rich world.