Food Waste Facts
Food waste is a global problem. Households, businesses, and other organizations throw away mountains of edible items that all adds up and creates some shocking food waste facts. For starters, around a fifth of food produced for humans to eat goes to waste.
The hospitality and retail industries are often highlighted as the main offenders, but households account for 60% of food waste and other sectors play their part too. Higher income countries such as the USA also chuck out more food products than lower income and developing nations.
There’s a huge financial impact alongside the resources, energy, time, and effort wasted – food loss and waste costs the world $1 trillion every year. We’ve compiled some facts about food waste that highlight the scale of the problem. Tuck into some appetizing food waste facts and statistics from around the world – and those that leave a bad aftertaste!
What causes food waste?
Causes of food waste can vary depending on where it occurs and the type of food. Wastage is possible all along the food supply chain – at each stage from production to plate. In many cases, waste food is avoidable or can be minimized by tackling issues at the root cause.
Common causes of food waste include:
- Production problems – when food supply exceeds demand or food items fail to meet the specifications of sellers and buyers it can create waste. For example, if a shop has too many Christmas cakes left in January it struggles to sell before they go out of date or receives bags of carrots that are too small to sell.
- Damage – poor packaging, handling errors, and movement during transportation can all damage food products and mean they become unsellable and inedible. Dropping food items in restaurants, shops, and at home also creates waste.
- Improper storage – keeping foodstuffs at temperatures that are too high or low can cause spoilage (including during transportation). Poor stock rotation in the back of stores and restaurants may also mean items go out of date before use and are wasted.
- Overordering – restaurants and stores may order more ingredients or food products than they need, which means they get thrown away. This could be due to poor inventory or less demand than expected. Consumers can also over purchase and then chuck out foodstuffs they can’t use.
- Preparation waste – preparing dishes in restaurants naturally leads to waste such as vegetable peelings. Meat offcuts, mistakes, and overordering ingredients can also create food waste.
- Plate waste – leftovers from diners are another cause of food waste. Reducing portion and plate sizes is a possible way to tackle the problem.
Why is food waste a problem?
Food waste is a problem because as it rots and decomposes it releases methane. This is a greenhouse gas that’s 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Improper disposal of waste food in landfills takes up valuable space and has a terrible environmental impact as methane is released.
Up to 800 million people live in food poverty around the world. Lots of food waste is avoidable and better food management could help tackle the problem of global hunger. Producing food also uses a lot of water, energy, and resources that are wasted when food is spoiled.
There’s the financial impact too as more than $1 trillion worth of food is wasted every year around the world. This comes at a big cost to restaurants, stores, households, and other organizations. Food waste is such a problem that the UN has a target of halving the amount by 2030.
How much food is wasted
in the world?
More than one billion tons of food go to waste in the world every year. It means about one fifth of all food produced is wasted. Most food is wasted by households (60%), while the food service industry is responsible for about 28% of global food waste and retail for the remaining 12%.
Global food waste statistics
Food waste is a worldwide problem present in every country, as the following global food waste statistics demonstrate. If food waste was eliminated tomorrow, then it would create enough meals to feed three billion people. Understand the true scale of the problem with these worldwide food waste statistics:
- The equivalent of more than one billion meals a day are wasted around the world due to global food waste and loss
- Food waste and loss creates up to 10% of global greenhouse gases – more than the aviation sector
- Estimates of the carbon footprint of food waste is 3 billion tons of CO2 equivalents released every year
- Food loss and waste would be the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter if it was a country – behind China and the USA
- The general volume of waste by food groups per year is – cereals (30%), root crops and fruit and vegetables (40-50%), oil seed and meat and dairy (20%), and fish (35%)
- That means almost half of all fruit and vegetables grown go to waste
- 4 billion hectares of agricultural land are used to produce food that goes to waste or is lost
- Where food waste occurs varies depending on wealth – 40% of food loss happens at post-harvest and processing stages in developing countries, while 40% happens at retail and consumer level in developed nations
- A quarter of the world’s freshwater is used to produce food that’s wasted or lost
- Producing food wastes the same amount of freshwater that could fill Lake Geneva three times
Food waste statistics
in America
The USA throws out more food than any other country in the world – despite the fact that around 35 million Americans experience food insecurity. It’s a huge problem as these US food waste statistics show. So large is the issue that in 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set a target to cut food waste in half by 2030.
Ruin your appetite with these statistics and facts about food waste in America:
- In the USA, 92 billion pounds of food are wasted annually – similar to around 145 billion meals
- The average American throws out 20lbs of food every month
- It’s estimated that 38% of food is unsold or uneaten in the US – about 40 million tons
- Waste food costs America around $218 billion annually
- An average family of four spends $1,600 each year on food that’s wasted
- Where food waste originates varies across the USA:
- Households – 43%
- Restaurants, grocery stores, and food service companies – 40%
- Farms – 16%
- Manufacturers – 2%
- Americans waste an estimated one pound of food per person per day
- Food makes up about 22% of municipal solid waste (MSW)
- Production of food waste in America is equivalent to emitting greenhouse gases from 37 million cars
- Dairy products are the food items most thrown away by Americans
Grocery store food waste statistics
There are more than 62,000 grocery stores and supermarket businesses in the USA, plus hundreds of thousands of other stores that sell food products. They manage and sell a wide range of food items and create lots of waste due to storage issues, sell by dates, and consumer behavior.
Shop for a shock with these grocery store food waste statistics:
- Around 30% of food goes to waste from grocery stores in the USA
- American retail stores create 16 billion pounds of food waste every year
- About six million tons of food is unsold annually from US grocery stores
- Retail food waste is worth about double the profit from food sales
- Sadly around 35% of grocery store food waste goes to landfills or for incineration
- More than half of food waste in grocery stores is attributed to concerns or confusion over freshness date labels
- 60 million tons of fruits and vegetables are thrown away in the USA as they’re ‘too ugly to eat’
- Up to 60% of fish caught in Europe are wasted as they don’t meet supermarket quality standards
Fast food waste statistics
The US is home to more than 200,000 fast food restaurants. And it’s estimated that just over a third of American adults eat some sort of fast food every day. Alongside all the wrappers chucked out, the industry generates lots of food waste. Grab a slice of these fast food waste statistics:
- Restaurants in the USA waste more than 11 million tons of food each year
- Food waste from restaurants is responsible for 15% of food in landfills
- Almost 10% of food is wasted in fast food restaurants by consumers
- Spending $1 to reduce waste in a fast food restaurant could see a return of $7
- Fast food creates more than two million tons of plastic packaging annually
Facts about food waste
in schools
Around 50 million students attend more than 115,000 schools across the USA. Eating habits vary between pupils with plenty taking packed lunches and others using the school cafeteria. Either way, elementary, middle, and high schools in the US all create lots of food waste. Learn how much is chucked out with these facts about food waste in schools:
- It’s estimated that American schools generate 530,000 tons of food waste each year
- The average American school wastes about 39 pounds of food and 19 cartons of milk per student per year
- Studies have found that between 27 and 53% of food from school cafeterias is thrown away
- Fruit and vegetables are the most wasted food items by students, which account for 50% of plate waste
- Extending lunchtimes by just ten minutes could help reduce school food waste levels, according to the USDA
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