The world wastes over a billion tonnes of food a year
The world wastes a staggering 1.05 billion tonnes of food a year, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). That is almost one fifth of all the food that reaches shops, restaurants and homes, and about 132 kilograms for every person on Earth1.
Put another way, households alone threw away more than a billion meals every single day in 20221. All this happens while 783 million people go hungry1.
Most food is wasted at home
Shops and restaurants are often blamed for food waste, but most of it happens in our own kitchens. Households are responsible for 60% of the total, about 631 million tonnes. Restaurants, canteens and other food services waste 28%, and shops 12%12.
That's roughly how much food the average household wastes each year for every person living in it
That household figure, about 79 kilograms a year per person, includes inedible parts such as bones, peels and shells, which most measurements cannot separate from edible food. Even so, a large share is food that could have been eaten: bought and forgotten at the back of the fridge, cooked and not finished, or thrown out because of a date on the label.
Food waste is not only a rich-country problem
It is easy to assume that food waste is a habit of wealthy countries. UNEP’s figures suggest otherwise. The average household food waste per person in high-income, upper-middle-income and lower-middle-income countries differs by just 7 kilograms a year1.
The report also found that hotter countries seem to waste more food at home per person. UNEP suggests this may be because people there eat more fresh food with inedible parts, and because food is harder to keep cool without reliable refrigeration along the way1.
Food loss and food waste are not the same
This page counts food waste: food that reaches shops, restaurants and homes and is then thrown away. Food loss happens earlier, on farms, in storage and in transport, before food ever reaches a shop. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that about 13% of food is lost this way, with fruit and vegetables the worst affected at around a quarter3.
You may have seen an older, much-quoted figure of 1.3 billion tonnes of food lost or wasted each year. That combined both loss and waste, and came from a 2011 estimate made with methods that have since been replaced. The two UN agencies now measure loss and waste separately, and the figures cannot simply be added together.
The environmental cost of food nobody eats
Every tonne of wasted food carries all the costs of producing it: the land, the water, the fertiliser, the fuel and the emissions. Food production as a whole causes around a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions and uses half of the world’s habitable land4. When food is thrown away, all of that is spent for nothing.
UNEP estimates that food loss and waste together cause 8 to 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and take up almost a third of the world’s agricultural land1. The economic cost is estimated at around 1 trillion US dollars a year1.
Wasting meat is especially costly, because meat has the largest footprint of any food, as the page on the environmental effects of meat production shows.
The meat the world produces this year, some of which will be thrown away.
Where food waste is heading
The world has set itself a clear goal. Under the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, countries have agreed to halve food waste per person in shops and homes by 2030, and to reduce food losses along the supply chain3. With only a few years left, the world is nowhere near that target.
Some countries show that big cuts are possible. Japan has reduced its food waste by 31% and the United Kingdom by 18%1. Yet only 21 countries have included food loss or waste in their national plans to fight climate change1.
The reason may be that food waste is spread across billions of kitchens rather than concentrated in a few factories, which makes it hard to regulate. That also means it is one of the few big environmental problems where individual households can make a real difference. Buying less, planning meals, understanding date labels and using leftovers all add up. If households everywhere cut their food waste by as much as Japan has, around 200 million tonnes of food a year would no longer be thrown away.
The rest of what the world raises and eats is in the food section.
