Food Waste: Food fit for consumption but consciously discarded at the retail or consumption phase.
Each year, food waste costs the world US$750 billion and proves disastrous for the environment. Producing 1.3 billion tonnes of food that is wasted contributes to deforestation, land and soil degradation, and destroys countless animal and plant species. Food that is never eaten accounts for 25% of global freshwater consumption and most of this food waste ends up in landfills where it decomposes, produces methane, and adds 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases to the planet’s atmosphere. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouses gases, behind China and the United States.