It’s a staggering figure, but about one-third of all food produced for human consumption around the world goes to waste. Modern developed countries are even more wasteful.

Just as we can strive to make our food production more friendly to the planet, we can also reduce the amount of food we throw out. That includes edible food that never reaches the shops, unsold or uneaten food in restaurants, or food we discard at home.

Globally, the impacts of food waste are astounding. It contributes greenhouse gas emissions, uses freshwater that we can ill afford to sacrifice, costs millions of farm animals their lives and accounts for billions of dollars’ worth of human labour, not to mention the vast forests cut down and wetlands drained to produce food that is never eaten, or the mountains of fertiliser and pesticides applied for no purpose.

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