Households worldwide squandered over one billion meals a day in 2022, as challenges in reducing food waste threaten to hold back progress towards achieving global biodiversity targets, a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report has said.
An estimated 132 kg of food per person was wasted over the year, according to the 2024 UNEP Food Waste Index Report published on Wednesday.
Households made up the largest share (60%) of waste, followed by restaurants and other food services (28%), and retail (12%).
Overall, approximately 1 bln tonnes of food were squandered in 2022, against an estimated 931 million tonnes in 2019, UNEP estimated.
“Food waste is a global tragedy,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP.
“Not only is this a major development issue, but the impacts of such unnecessary waste are causing substantial costs to the climate and nature.”
Nearly 30% of the world’s agricultural land is used for growing food that ultimately gets wasted, the report said, sounding the alarm on the fallout on ecosystem and species conservation.
The conversion of natural ecosystems for agriculture is regarded as the primary driver of land-related biodiversity impacts, accounting for almost 75% of them, UNEP estimated in a separate study this year.
“As environmental impacts accrue across the life cycle of food products, food waste at the consumer level presents the highest burden,” the report said.
TRACKING PROGRESS TO 2030
UNEP also warned against data gaps that hamper the measurement of food waste.
While data availability has almost doubled since 2021, many low- and middle-income countries are lagging behind, especially in monitoring retail and food services.
“Data for the retail and food service sectors remain insufficient,” the report said.
“These data gaps should be addressed for a more complete understanding of global food waste. Unknown quantities could be substantial.”
UNEP called on G20 countries to lead the way in developing accurate reporting systems, and track progress towards the targets set by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
At the moment, only four of them – Australia, Japan, the UK, and the US – and the EU have estimates suitable for tracking progress to 2030, the report said.
Under the GBF target 16 and SDG target 12, nations must halve food waste by 2030, though recent studies unveiled that the trend is set to increase further over the next six years.
“Countries in the G20 should leverage their economic and political influence to take significant action … connecting the fight against hunger and the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.”
By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com
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