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The enormous scale of global food waste. (cdn.statcdn.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The UNEP estimates that in 2022, the world produced 1.05 billion tonnes of food waste across the retail, food service and household sectors. The average amount of food waste per capita that year is estimated to be 132 kg, of which 79 kg was household waste.

Fascinating to note, despite all the inefficiencies in capitalist food distribution and how horrifying entire dumpsters full of stale bread or "spoiled" vegetables are, roughly 60% of all food waste occurs at the household level, that is, because of the decisions of individual consumers on how they handle their own food at home.

The next time someone tries to argue "individual consumption doesn't matter" I'll have to cite this chart.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

"individual consumption doesn't matter" is green "your vote doesn't matter"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I'd argue individual consumption is often more impactful than your vote. You can't gerrymander a dollar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

When it comes to votes, details aside, your vote is weighed equally to everyone else. When it comes to most matters of consumption, especially relating to greenhouse gasses and other environmental issues, individual "votes" pale in comparison to industry. It becomes more like owning a share in a company, yeah your shareholder vote "matters" but the bank/investment firm that owns 500,000 shares certainly has more sway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not that I am disagreeing individual waste is a big part of it, I am not convinced this chart adequately demonstrates that. Is the per capita from the chart after they remove non-individual waste from the total? If not then the per capita includes things like commercial or industrial waste and it’s not really reflecting an individual waste perspective.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The chart measures household food waste. So yes. That is explicitly what it did.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Do you know where the chart came from (presumably the statista article author)? I didn’t see it in the report, and I didn’t match the numbers so wasn’t really sure.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Would be really interesting to look at foodwaste as a percentage of food consumption. Anyone know whether that kind of data is available anywhere?

[–] odium 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Anyone have any ideas why Brazil's per capita is so high?

And Russia's so low?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

No idea how its being calculated but if it takes into account food lost during transport, tons of food spoil during transport in Brazil due to the terrible infrastructure for goods.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

This is household food waste and the study also inclues retail and food services.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My own uneducated guess would be weather. But I'm sure it is something else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That makes sense. Brazil's number is close to its peers in Latin America and the Caribbean.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And how is China so high? Do they just throw shit away all the time?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, China's per capita waste is similar to that of the United States or Germany, so presumably they throw roughly as much shit away per person as the US - it's just that, having four times The people, they naturally throw away four times The shit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Oh yeah you're right, I didn't pay attention, my bad!