Households across the world waste 1 billion meals a day, says UN report

Subject: IR

Section: Int reports

Food Waste Index Report 2024:

Jointly authored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), a U.K.-based non-profit.
International Day of Zero Waste– 30 March.

Key findings:

Households across the globe wasted over one billion meals a day in 2022, even as 783 million people struggled with hunger and a third of humanity faced food insecurity.
Out of the total food waste in 2022, 60% happened at the household level, with food services responsible for 28%, and retail 12%.
Sustainable Development Goal 12.3– Halving food waste by 2030.
Food wastage is not a “rich country problem” with observed average levels of household food waste for high-income, upper-middle, and lower-middle-income countries differing by just 7 kg per capita.
At present, only four G-20 countries (Australia, Japan, the U.K., U.S.) and the European Union have food waste estimates suitable for tracking progress to 2030.
Hotter countries appear to generate more food waste per capita in households, potentially due to higher consumption of fresh foods with substantial inedible parts and a lack of robust cold chains.
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions due to food loss and waste generated are five times higher than that of the aviation sector.
Compared to urban areas, rural ones generally wasted less food.

Source: TH