A new United Nations (UN) report has stated that more than 1 billion meals are wasted across the world each day while nearly 800 million people go hungry.
According to the report, the world wasted 1.05 billion metric tons of food in 2022, meaning about a fifth of the food available to people was squandered by households, restaurants and other parts of the food service and retail sectors.
“Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions will go hungry today as food is wasted across the world.
“Not only is this a major development issue, but the impacts of such unnecessary waste are causing substantial costs to the climate and nature,” it stated.
The figures are in stark contrast with the report’s findings that about a third of the world’s population faces food insecurity and 783 million are affected by hunger.
The staggering statistics in the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Food Waste Index Report 2024, raise questions about the world’s ability to distribute the food it produces and highlight the role of food waste as a driver of climate change, according to UNEP Director Inger Andersen.
The report distinguished between food “loss” — food discarded early in the supply chain, for instance, vegetables that rot in fields and meat that spoils when unrefrigerated — and food “waste,” food thrown out by households, restaurants and stores.
Households wasted 631 million metric tons of food in 2022 — 60% of the total — while the food service sector accounted for 28% of the waste and retail 12%.
According to the report, a person wastes 79 kilograms (174 pounds) of food annually, which translates to at least one billion meals of edible food wasted in households every day.
The research states that even these figures are modest. Although data collecting has improved—since the UN’s 2021 food waste report, the number of data points at the household level has nearly doubled—it condemned nations for their sporadic monitoring.
It stated that although food loss and waste account for 8% to 10% of global planet-heating emissions, or nearly five times more than emissions from the aviation industry, only 21 nations have incorporated it in their national climate policies.
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Food is resource-intensive to produce, requiring huge amounts of land and water, and food systems are responsible for about a third of global planet-heating emissions.
The vast majority of food waste goes to landfill, generating methane as it breaks down. A potent greenhouse gas, methane has about 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years.
Food waste not only fuels climate change but may be exacerbated by it, the report said. Hotter countries were found to waste more food than cooler ones, as higher temperatures make it more challenging to store and transport food before it spoils.
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