A FAO report says 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year worldwide.
A recent UN report says 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year worldwide, while hunger and malnourishment threatens 870 million people every day.
According to the œFood wastage footprint” by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization™s (FAO), more than 1.3 billion tons of food, which amounts to USD 750 billion, is wasted in production, distribution and consumption every year.
The report says 54 percent of the loss happens during the processing after harvest and mostly takes place in developing countries. This is while the remaining waste, 46 percent, happens after products are sold in the market or after consumption.
œA combination of consumer behavior and lack of communication in the supply chain underlies the higher levels of food waste in affluent societies,” the FAO said.
œConsumers fail to plan their shopping, over purchase, or over-react to ˜best-before-dates,™ while quality and aesthetic standards lead retailers to reject large amounts of perfectly edible food.”
œUneaten food that ends-up rotting in landfills, the single largest component of most countries™ municipal solid waste, accounts for as much as 25 percent of national methane emissions,” FAO said.
This is while more than 870 million people go hungry every day, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization™s (FAO) Director-General José Graziano da Silva said.
œAll of us – farmers and fishers; food processors, restaurants and supermarkets; local and national governments; individual consumers – can and must do a lot of things to help prevent food wastage from happening in the first place, and re-use or recycle it when we can™t,” Graziano da Silva added.
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