More than 1 billion tons of food enter the world's waste stream every year, filling landfills instead of providing vital support to millions of hungry people.
United Nations (UN) agencies have called on governments, businesses, and citizens to take urgent action to address this crisis, which they describe as "a silent but enormous crisis."
On the occasion of International Zero Waste Day, celebrated on March 30th, organizers emphasized that food waste coexists with hunger and malnutrition, accelerates climate change, and generates severe economic losses.
The amount of food thrown away annually is equivalent to almost one-fifth of all food available for human consumption, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).
Enough food to prepare 1 billion meals is thrown away every day, while nearly 9% of the world's population suffers from hunger. "We are jeopardizing our climate, our ecosystems, and our ability to feed ourselves in the future," acknowledged UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Such waste generates up to 10% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and around 14% of methane emissions, one of the most polluting gases, the report confirmed.
Since records began, Earth's climate has never been as unbalanced as it is now: GHG concentrations are causing the continuous warming of the atmosphere and oceans and accelerating the melting of ice masses, the World Meteorological Organization warned in a report released on March 23.
According to UN estimates, around 60% of food waste occurs in households, while the rest is distributed among food services and businesses, highlighting persistent failures from production to consumption.
Coordinated actions between governments and businesses could contribute to the design and implementation of efficient circular economy systems. Likewise, changing habits would help families get more value from their purchases.
However, a previous UNEP report, issued in March 2024, revealed that households wasted the equivalent of more than one billion meals every day during 2022, while 783 million people suffered from hunger and a third of humanity lived in food insecurity.
Internationally, the estimated cost of food loss and waste amounts to approximately one trillion dollars annually, the report stated.
Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) details that 13% of produce is lost in the supply chain after harvest and before reaching retailers, and another 19% is wasted in sales to end consumers, food service establishments, and households.
"Producing food that is not consumed means wasting not only essential nutrients, but also the valuable resources invested in producing the food and getting it to the consumer: energy, water, land, labor, and money," the organization lamented.
Nor should the negative impacts of inflation be ignored: due to rising prices, in 2024 some 2.6 billion people could not afford a healthy diet and 2.3 billion suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity—that is, 28% of the world's population, the FAO stated.
According to forecasts, which could worsen, nearly 512 million people will suffer from chronic undernourishment in 2030, and 60% of them will be inhabitants of Africa, noted the report on The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025, prepared by five UN agencies.
At the most recent United Nations climate conference —held in the Brazilian city of Belém— UNEP and its partners launched Food Waste Breakthrough, an initiative that aims to halve food waste by 2030 and reduce methane emissions by up to 7%.
If successful, this would be a commendable step forward, but at this point, too many commitments remain unfulfilled, including those related to food and environmental issues, even though the international community adopted the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals in 2015.
