How much food waste costs your pocket and the planet

Before throwing away food, it might be helpful to remember that EU There are tens of millions of people who are not guaranteed a nutritious meal every two days.

Each European citizen throws away 131 kg of food per year. At the same time, 33 million people in the EU are hungry. Thanks to new measures to reduce food waste a family of 4 will save, on average, about 400 euros per year.

Every year in the EU almost 59 million tons of food waste is generated, corresponding to 131 kg per person. Let’s look at the problems caused by them. Globally, a third of food produced is wasted without being consumed, increasing the burden on the environment.

The economic impact is that up to €132,000,000,000 per year is lost in the EU due to food waste. Reducing food waste will reduce the resources needed to produce the food we eat. Meanwhile, if you imagine that “food waste were a country,” it would become the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world after the United States and China.

What is important is that the amount of food waste per capita in households as a whole equally across different income groups of countries (as defined by the World Bank), suggesting that food waste efforts are equally relevant in high- and middle-income countries.

This strongly contradicts the previous decade’s narrative that household food waste was a rich-country problem, and highlights the need for middle-income countries to establish baselines and develop national strategies to prevent more food waste.

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