International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste - Key Messages

●     The world wasted 1.05 billion tonnes of food in 2022, about 1/5 of all the food that was available to consumers.

●     Most food wastage, 60%, occurs in the home.

●     Households waste over 1 billion meals worth of edible food every day, the equivalent of 1.3 meals every day for everyone in the world affected by hunger.

●     Food waste is costly, financially and environmentally: costing upwards of $1 trillion dollars a year globally and amounting to 8 to 10 percent of GHGs.

●     Food that goes to waste is a wasted opportunity to promote food security, in addition to being a waste of water, energy, time, labor, and agricultural land.

●     Every meal is an opportunity to reduce food waste. This is one of the most accomplishable climate actions we can each take to reduce our ecological footprints.

●     The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – specifically SDG 12, target 12.3 – calls for halving per-capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reducing food losses along production and supply chains.

●     Japan and the UK have successfully cut their food waste by 31% and 18% respectively.

●     Cities have great potential for food waste reduction and circularity. With a believed 80% of food to be consumed in cities by 2050, food waste is and will continue to be an urban issue.