Dand according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Food Waste Index Report, each person wasted 79 kilograms of food that year.

The number means that, of the total food wasted, 60% (631 million tons) came from families, while 28% was the responsibility of food services and 12% from retail, highlighted the document released today.

“In a year in which a third of humanity faced food insecurity, each household threw away the equivalent of one billion meals a day, that is, 1.3 meals a day for people affected by hunger in the world,” the analysis pointed out.

Food waste, warns UNEP, generates between 8% and 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is almost five times more than the total emissions of the aviation sector.

The situation continues to harm the global economy and fuel climate change, in addition to representing serious damage to nature and an increase in pollution.

“Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions of people go hungry due to food waste around the world,” said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen, presenting the report.

A problem that, researchers remind us, is not just a problem for rich countries.

“It’s a global problem,” said report co-author and director of British waste organization WRAP, Richard Swannel.

The report’s authors assured that the differences in per capita household food waste between high-income and lower-income countries were surprisingly small.

“The data is really clear at this point: this is a global problem that we could all solve tomorrow, whether to save money or to reduce environmental impact”, Swannel further highlighted.

The United Nations analysis, published at a time when food crises are deepening in several regions, such as the Gaza Strip or Sudan, aims to track countries’ progress towards achieving the goal of halving food waste by 2030.

According to researchers, currently only four G20 countries (the 20 richest and emerging economies) – Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, in addition to the European Union (EU) – have the possibility of meeting the objective within six years. years.

In the last published report, referring to 2021, UNEP concluded that 17% of the food produced that year across the world had been wasted, that is, 1,030 million tons of food.

However, the study authors warned that comparisons should not be made directly between values ​​from the two years, as the number of countries reporting data has almost doubled.

Read Also: Nine out of 10 Portuguese people avoid food waste to save money

Source: https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/2529498/um-quinto-dos-alimentos-produzidos-pelo-mundo-em-2022-foi-desperdicado

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