The amount of food discarded as waste by households and the catering industry is equivalent to 123 kg per inhabitant a year and accounts for 16 per cent of the total amount of food reaching consumers. These are findings of a new study of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) based on statistics from six EU member states.
Almost 80 per cent of this waste is avoidable according to the study as this share consists of food which is still edible. It is estimated to average 97 kg per inhabitant and year. Extrapolated to the whole of the EU, this translates into 47 million tonnes of edible food discarded annually.
