"Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions of people will go hungry today because of food waste around the world”, Pnuma executive director Inger Andersen said wednesday at the launch of the report.

The Food Waste Index 2024 report, conducted jointly with partner organization WRAP, is titled "Think, Eat, Save. Tracking progress to halve global food waste".

The study presents a global estimate of food waste at the retail and consumer level, as well as suggesting best practices to halve food waste by 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations.

According to Pnuma, 1.05 billion tons of food waste (including inedible parts) were generated in 2022, amounting to 132 kilograms per capita and almost one-fifth of all food available to consumers.

Of the total food wasted, 60% (631 million tons) came from households worldwide, 28% from food services and 12% from retail.

Each person wasted 79 kilograms of food per year, and in households the equivalent of one billion meals were wasted every day, or in other words, 1.3 meals per day for the world's hungry people.

In turn, food waste, the report notes, generates between 8% and 10% of global greenhouse gas (GEI) emissions, which is almost five times more than the total emissions of the aviation sector.

Food waste continues to harm the global economy and fuel climate change, loss of nature and pollution, although Pnuma pointed out that it is not just a problem for rich countries.

Thus, on average, countries of different income levels waste a similar amount of food per person.

Only four countries of the Group of Twenty (G20, a bloc of rich and developing economies), Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, in addition to the European Union (EU), have adequate estimates on food waste to track progress until 2030.

WRAP CEO Harriet Lamb therefore called for "more coordinated action across continents and supply chains”.

Translated by: A.M