The UNEP estimates that in 2022, the world produced 1.05 billion tonnes of food waste across the retail, food service and household sectors. The average amount of food waste per capita that year is estimated to be 132 kg, of which 79 kg was household waste.
Fascinating to note, despite all the inefficiencies in capitalist food distribution and how horrifying entire dumpsters full of stale bread or “spoiled” vegetables are, roughly 60% of all food waste occurs at the household level, that is, because of the decisions of individual consumers on how they handle their own food at home.
The next time someone tries to argue “individual consumption doesn’t matter” I’ll have to cite this chart.
Would be really interesting to look at foodwaste as a percentage of food consumption. Anyone know whether that kind of data is available anywhere?
Anyone have any ideas why Brazil’s per capita is so high?
And Russia’s so low?
My own uneducated guess would be weather. But I’m sure it is something else.
And how is China so high? Do they just throw shit away all the time?
I mean, China’s per capita waste is similar to that of the United States or Germany, so presumably they throw roughly as much shit away per person as the US - it’s just that, having four times The people, they naturally throw away four times The shit.
Oh yeah you’re right, I didn’t pay attention, my bad!