Household food waste often begins before food reaches the bin

Before a household discards food

Shopping, storage and cooking decisions can combine into one discarded item.

A household may buy more than planned, eat out unexpectedly, forget food at the back of the fridge or cook more than the household later uses. Each event changes the chance that food will be eaten.

Reviewing only the moment of disposal makes the cause hard to find. Reviewing where the plan changed can point to a smaller purchase, a more visible storage place or a smaller recipe.

How to read 1.05 billion tonnes

UNEP’s total includes edible food and inedible parts such as peels and bones.

UNEP combines edible and inedible parts so countries can report food waste more consistently. The full 1.05 billion tonnes therefore does not represent untouched meals.

The 2024 estimate is higher than the estimate in UNEP’s previous report, but the reports are not a simple trend line. UNEP added more data and changed parts of the estimation method, so the difference does not show that global food waste worsened by the same amount.

Why the household share is not household blame

The 60% household share does not mean households can solve food waste alone.

UNEP’s 1.05 billion-tonne estimate covers waste after food reaches retail, food service and households. A separate global estimate places about 13% of food loss between harvest and retail.

Package sizes, date labels, restaurant portions and changing schedules can all affect food that households later discard. Household action matters, but the 60% figure does not separate households from retailers, food-service businesses or public policy.

A three-day household check

For three days, record what the household discarded and why.

First separate inedible parts, such as bones and peels, from food that could have been eaten. For edible food, add one reason: overbuying, changed plans, overcooking, forgotten storage or uncertainty about a date label.

After three days, choose the reason that appeared most often. If the household cooked too much, change the next recipe size. If food was forgotten, change its place in the fridge. Finding one repeated cause is more useful at first than weighing every item precisely.

If the same reason appears twice, test one change for the following week. Then check whether the household discarded that type of food less often. The record is a way to choose the next experiment, not a score of personal virtue.