While so much of the world remains in the clutches of poverty, it seems silly than that a select few countries could produce not only enough food to eat, but to throw in the garbage at the end of the day.
According to The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately one-third of all food produced is wasted. That’s 1.3 billion tonnes of wasted food every single year. To put that further into perspective, if even just one-fourth of the food that is currently lost or wasted could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million people globally.
Surprisingly, both industrialized and developing countries waste large amounts of food – between 600-700 tonnes. However, in developing countries, 40 per cent of those losses occur at post-harvest and processing levels, while in industrialized countries more than 40 per cent of those losses happen at consumer levels.
This means that in developed countries the behaviour of consumers plays a huge role in contributing to and, hopefully, eventually eliminating food waste.
Small changes go a long way. The following infographic from Money Guru further outlines the amount, and types, of food wasted each year. More importantly, it outlines a few simple ways you can do something about it. These simple changes won’t have a huge impact on your daily routine, but will create large ripples within society.