An interesting report was made public recently by the United Nations (UN) about the levels of food waste around the world — and, perhaps surprisingly, Greece comes at the top of those who waste the most.
Food Waste Index Report
Τhe Food Waste Index Report aims at presenting the most comprehensive food waste data collection, analysis, and modeling to date, generating a new estimate of global food waste.
The report claims that its data generate strong evidence to guide a national strategy on food waste prevention which is sufficiently sensitive to pick up changes in food waste over two- or four-year intervals, and that enables meaningful comparisons between countries globally.
”Reducing food waste at retail, foodservice and household level can provide multi-faceted benefits for both people and the planet. However, the true scale of food waste and its impacts have not been well understood until now. As such, the opportunities provided by food waste reduction have remained largely untapped and under-exploited,” the 2021 report underlines.
”If we want to get serious about tackling food waste, we need to increase efforts to measure food and inedible parts wasted at retail and consumer level and track food waste generation in kilograms per capita at country level,” it concludes.
The situation in Greece
The amount of food that is being wasted in Europe is high, something that is the case in almost every corner of the globe which is highly developmed and the standard of living is also high.
However, the situation in Greece doesn’t look good — at all.
Not only do the Greeks waste almost double the amount of food that is being wasted on average around the world, but they are also first in the entire European continent in terms of food waste.
Greeks waste on average a staggering 142 kilograms (313 pounds) of food every year, compared to 74 kilograms (163 pounds), which is the global average.
The rest of Europe
The only other European nation to waste more than 100 kilograms of food per capita is Malta. The tiny Mediterranean country trashes a total of 129 kilograms (284 pounds) of food per year per capita, coming second in Europe.
Hungary and Luxemburg come third and fourth respectively with Hungarians wasting on average 94 kilograms of food and the people of Luxembourg 91.
On the contrary, the most frugal in terms of food waste are those from Russia and Slovenia, with only 33 kilograms (73 pounds) of food being wasted on average every year per capita.
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