Blog Posts: food loss

This episode of WRI’s “Big Ideas Into Action” podcast examines the battle to end food waste in Europe, Latin America and beyond.

One of the great challenges of the 21st century is how to nutritiously feed nearly 10 billion people by 2050. One key is reducing food loss and waste at a large scale. Here are 10 interventions that can help in this critical effort.

Too much food is lost or wasted, and the lack of efficiency is very bad for the climate. A progress report suggests that governments and businesses need to do more if they're going to meet Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, which calls for the world to halve food loss and waste by 2030.

Nearly a third of all food produced in the world goes uneaten each year, costing the global economy $940 billion and emitting 8% of planet-warming greenhouse gases. We can't afford for that to go on.

How can the world feed nearly 10 billion people by 2050 while also advancing economic development, protecting forests and stabilizing the climate? Technological innovations like plant-based "beef" and low-emissions rice can help.

Fewer than a dozen national climate plans include measures to reduce food loss and waste. That's a problem—if food loss and waste were its own country, it would be world's third-largest emitter.

While the average person drinks 2 to 4 liters of water a day, it requires an astonishing 2,000 to 5,000 liters of water to produce the food that the average person eats each day! Here are five ways companies, farmers and consumers can lessen the food system’s impact on water.

One-third of all food produced ultimately goes uneaten. Retailers and others are responding with clever inventions that reduce food loss and waste in stores, supply chains and homes.

Valentine's Day and other holidays can mean big business for restaurants – and often big amounts of food wasted. It doesn't have to be this way. Restaurants can dramatically cut food waste and see a host of benefits from doing so.

Can we feed the world without destroying it? New research reveals 22 steps to a sustainable food future.