Food waste: a big problem with an impact on climate change

Food production is responsible for approximately 26% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Since food is a basic need, the impossibility of reducing emissions in this area could be considered unquestionable. Naturally, the reduction could come from the hand of new dietary paradigms or new technologies for food production. But there is one part that we cannot ignore: food waste.

More emissions than all global aviation

Unfortunately, not all of these emissions associated with food production are “harnessed”. And it is that 24% of the emissions associated with producing food correspond to food waste. This means that about 6% of all emissions are associated with food waste, which is 3 times the emissions associated with all world aviation.

Different problems in each region

While in richer countries food waste and therefore the emissions associated with it are on the side of consumption in homes and restaurants, in poorer countries waste is on the side of production and storage:

– In resource-rich countries where eating is only a small part of the purchasing power of the average consumer, they take less care not to waste food.

– In developing countries the consumer makes the most of all food, but the production systems and also the logistics networks that transport and preserve are immature and the food ends up spoiling.

In per capita terms

But the problem is not equally big all over the world. If we look at it in individual terms, we see that we can attribute to each person in the richest part of the world between 2 and 3 times those of people in the poorest areas, as shown in the image that heads this page.