A billion meals thrown away every day
Rotting food waste produces up to 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, about five times the total from the entire aviation industry, the UN Environment Programme warned this week.
More than one billion meals are left uneaten every day, according to UNEP, and around 60 per cent of that discarded food comes from households. The waste drags along everything used to produce it: the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1.4 billion hectares of land, roughly 28 per cent of the world's agricultural land, is used to grow food that is never eaten. The water used to grow and prepare that food is wasted as well.
Methane does the damage
The climate impact comes mostly from methane, released when food decomposes without oxygen in landfills. Methane traps about 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, so food waste alone accounts for up to 14 per cent of global methane emissions.
Cutting waste is one of the faster ways to slow warming, because those emissions arrive quickly and stop quickly once food is diverted from landfill. Composting, better cold chains, clearer date labels and smaller household portions all reduce the total.
The 2030 target
At the COP30 climate talks in Brazil in 2025, governments launched the Food Waste Breakthrough, which aims to halve food waste by 2030 and cut methane emissions by up to 7 per cent through action in cities and food businesses.
Progress so far is uneven. Only a minority of countries have written food waste targets into their national climate plans, and measurement remains weak in much of the world. UNEP says better data is a first step, since countries cannot manage waste they do not count.