We could feed all the people in the world suffering from hunger with one meal a day, made only from wasted food, said Richard Swanell from the non-governmental organization WRAP. This institution co-created a report which shows that over a billion tons of food will be wasted in the world in 2022. Most were thrown out.
The United Nations said on Wednesday that one billion meals would be wasted every day in 2022, pointing to a “global tragedy” of food waste. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) says the “real numbers” may be much higher. The data comes from the report published on Wednesday – Food Waste Index.
– The practice of wasting food is a global tragedy. Millions of people around the world go hungry when food is thrown away, said Inger Andersen, director of UNEP.
Over a billion tons of food were wasted. Most were thrown out
Richard Swanell of the non-governmental organization WRAP, which contributed to the report, told AFP that “we could feed all the people in the world who suffer from hunger – about 800 million of them – with one meal a day, made only from wasted food.”
Of the more than one billion tons of food wasted in the world in 2022, 60%, or 631 million tons, is food thrown away by households. The share of gastronomy in food waste is 28%, and supermarkets and other food stores – 12%. According to the report, the cost of wasted food is over a trillion dollars a year.
Grounds
According to Swanell, the reason for food waste in households is poor shopping choices and poor estimation of the right amount of food needed when shopping. Another reason is throwing away products that are still suitable for consumption despite the expired expiration date.
Large amounts of food are also wasted for other reasons. In developing countries, this is often due to problems with inadequate food storage. Contrary to what is often believed, food waste is not only a problem of “rich countries”, but is observed all over the world.
Food waste – accounting for one-fifth of all available food in the world – is a sign of “environmental failure”, the report's authors point out. This practice is responsible for 10 percent. global greenhouse gas emissions. If we considered food waste as a “country”, it would rank third in the world in terms of emissions.
We hope this report will encourage us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and make better use of the food we buy, concluded Swannell.
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