🍎 Food waste around the world
About a fifth of the food available to consumers is thrown away, while hundreds of millions of people go hungry. Most of it is wasted in homes.
What the UN found
UNEP’s Food Waste Index Report 2024 found that 1.05 billion tonnes of food went to waste in 2022, which is 19 per cent of the food available to consumers. At the same time, 783 million people were going hungry.
Where is it wasted?
- Households: 631 million tonnes
- Food service (restaurants, cafes and canteens): 290 million tonnes
- Retail (shops and supermarkets): 131 million tonnes
So households account for around three fifths of the total. That is why what we do in our own kitchens matters so much.
What you can do
Plan meals, store food properly and use up leftovers. What cannot be eaten, such as peelings and bones, should go in your food waste caddy if your council collects it. See our food waste caddy guide for the UK rules.
Information on this page comes from the organisations named in the sources, and statistics are only as good as the data countries report. Different reports use different years and methods, so do not compare their numbers directly.
Sources
Spotted something wrong or out of date? Tell us and we will check it.
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🧴 The global plastics treaty: where talks have got to
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🧭 How other countries tackle waste
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