Food loss or food waste? Spot the differences.
Picture a kilogram of rice, flour, or sugar. Now imagine 59 million tonnes – it’s 59,000,000,000 kg. Difficult task? That’s how much food is wasted every year in Europe. Worldwide, it’s more than 900 million tonnes.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) categorizes this waste in two ways:
Food losses
These happen during production, storage, processing and transportation. For example, when a harvest is damaged by the weather or when a glass jar of tomato pulp breaks during transportation.
Food waste
Occurs in the consumption phase, including in retail, in food services (like restaurants or cafeterias) and at home. For example, when a yogurt goes to waste because it has passed its shelf life.
See Also
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