Almost 50% of the total amount of food thrown away in the UK comes from our homes. We throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year in the UK, and more than half of this is food and drink we could have eaten. Love Food Hate Waste
Every tonne of biodegradable waste produces 300-500 cubic metres of landfill gas From Green Box Day
Global methane emissions from landfill are estimated to be between 30 and 70 million tonnes each year. Most of this landfill methane currently comes from developed countries, where the levels of waste tend to be highest.
Over a 20 year period, one ton of methane causes 72 times more warming than one ton of carbon dioxide (CO2).Read more about methane
We throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year, the majority of which could have been eaten. This costs us £12 billion a year, harms the environment and wastes resources. In the UK food industry, waste is estimated to cost £5 billion per year. HMGov
Every year we (Americans) generate around 14 million tons of food waste which is 106 pounds of food waste per person 570,000 tons of this is composted for a 4.1% recovery rate. The rest, or 13.4 million tons is incinerated or landfilled and occupies 6.3 million cubic yards of landfilled MSW. EPA Gov Paper
The single largest producer of food waste in the United Kingdom is the domestic household. In 2007, households created 6,700,000 tonnes of food waste – accounting for 19 per cent of all municipal solid waste.[33] Potatoes account for the largest quantity of avoidable[d] food disposed of; 359,000 tonnes per year are thrown away, 49 per cent (177,400 tonnes) of which are untouched.[34] Bread slices account for the second food type most disposed of (328,000 tonnes per year), and apples the third (190,000 tonnes per year).[34] Salad is disposed of in the greatest proportion – 45 per cent of all salad purchased by weight will be thrown away uneaten.[35] (Wikipedia)
In 2012, the European Com- mission set a target of reducing by 50 percent the rate
of food loss and waste in Europe by 2020.28 If this target were extended globally to 2050, our analysis suggests that achieving it would reduce the need to produce 1,314 tril- lion kcal of food per year in 2050 relative to the business- as-usual scenario described in “The Great Balancing Act,” the rst installment of this World Resources Report work- ing paper series.29 In other words, cutting the global rate of food loss and waste from 24 percent of calories down
to 12 percent would close roughly 22 percent of the 6,000 trillion kcal per year gap between food available today and that needed in 2050.30 Thus our analysis suggests that reducing food loss and waste could be one of the leading global strategies or “menu items” for achieving a sustain- able food future.