More than a trillion dollars worth of food wasted around the world… a report reveals

The Food Waste Index report issued by the United Nations, yesterday, Wednesday, showed that families and companies threw away or wasted food worth more than a trillion dollars, which was described as a “moral failure.”

The report, which considered this waste not only a moral failure, but also an “environmental failure,” added that 1.05 billion tons of food, or about a fifth of the products available on the market, were wasted in 2022, most of them by families.

In this regard, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said: “Food waste is a global tragedy, as millions suffer from hunger today while food is wasted all over the world.”

Throw away a billion meals a day
In 2022, during the Corona pandemic specifically, the report indicates that families on all continents wasted more than a billion meals daily.

On the other hand, he described the billion-meal figure as a “very conservative estimate” and that the real number could be much higher.

Businesses providing food services such as restaurants and hotels were responsible for 28% of food waste in 2022, while retail trade such as butchery and vegetable sales were responsible for 12% of it.

But the group that contributed the most was the families that disposed of 60% of the total food waste, or about 631 million tons.
The report said that a lot of food was wasted simply because food items were lost during transportation or thrown away, because they spoiled due to lack of refrigeration, especially in developing countries.

Contrary to popular belief, food waste is not a problem only in rich countries, and can be observed all over the world, according to the report.

The report added that many low- and middle-income countries still lack adequate systems to track progress towards achieving the sustainable development goal of halving food waste by 2030, particularly in retail and food services.

According to the report, only four countries from the G20: Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the European Union have appropriate estimates to track progress until 2030, and Canada and Saudi Arabia also have appropriate estimates for households, with Brazil’s estimates expected in late 2024. .

Devastating environmental impacts
According to recent data, the United Nations report indicated that food loss and waste lead to the generation of between 8 and 10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, which is approximately 5 times the emissions of the aviation sector, in addition to a significant loss of biodiversity, pointing out that food losses and waste on The global economy is estimated at about one trillion dollars. (cnbc)