UN: Families and companies wasted food worth a trillion dollars

The United Nations Food Waste Index report showed that families and companies threw away more than $1 trillion worth of food while nearly 800 million people went hungry.

“Food waste is a global tragedy,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. “Millions will go hungry today as food is wasted all over the world.” The report indicated that this waste is not only a moral failure, but also an “environmental failure.”

The report believes that the “one billion meals” figure is “a very conservative estimate” and “the real number may be much higher.” UNEP, as custodian of the Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 indicator, publishes a report every three years that tracks country-level progress to halve food waste by 2030. The initial report, first published in 2021, showed that food waste Home-cooked food is a global challenge, and not limited to high rates of food waste.