Households around the world threw away 1 billion servings of food every day in 2022 in what the United Nations has called a "global tragedy" of food waste, AFP reports.
More than $1 trillion worth of food was thrown away by households and businesses at a time when nearly 800 million people were going hungry, the UN's latest Food Waste Index report said.
It said that in 2022, more than 1 billion tons of food - almost a fifth of all products available on the market - were thrown away, with the majority of it being discarded by households.
"Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions of people will go hungry today as food is wasted around the world," said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.
The report says this waste is not only a moral but also an "environmental failure".
Wasting food produces 5 times more emissions than the aviation sector, and requires vast tracts of land to be converted to grow crops that are never consumed.
The report, co-authored with the non-profit WRAP, is only the second produced by the UN on global food waste and provides the most comprehensive picture to date.
As data collection has improved, the true scale of the problem has become much clearer, said UNEP's Clementine O'Connor.
"The more food waste you look for, the more you find," she said.
The report said the figure of "a billion portions of food" was a "very conservative estimate" and "the actual amount could be much higher".
"To me, that's just staggering," said WRAP's Richard Swannell.
"You could actually feed all the people who are currently starving in the world - about 800 million people - with one meal a day just from the food that is thrown away every year," he added.
Swannell said the combined efforts of manufacturers and retailers had helped reduce waste and get food to those in need, and that more such action was needed.
Food services such as restaurants, canteens and hotels are responsible for 28% of all food waste in 2022, while retailers such as butchers and greengrocers throw away 12%.
But households are the biggest culprits, accounting for 60% - around 631 million tons.
Swannell said much of this is due to people simply buying more food than they need, but also misjudging portion sizes and not consuming leftovers.
Another problem is expiration dates, he said, with perfectly good products being thrown away because people mistakenly thought their food was expired.
Many foods, especially in developing countries, are not so frivolously wasted, but are lost in transit or spoiled due to lack of refrigeration facilities, the report said.
Contrary to popular belief, food wastage is not just a problem of "rich countries" and can be seen all over the world, the report said.
Warmer countries are also generating more waste, likely due to higher consumption of fresh foods with significant inedible parts. / BGNES
