Towards Zero-Waste and Circular Cities Key Findings of the Food Waste Index Report 2024

In 2022, while 783 million people are hungry and a third of humanity faces food insecurity, the world wasted 1.05 billion tonnes of food. This amounts to one fifth of food available to consumers being wasted, at the retail, food service, and household level. Out of the total food wasted in 2022, households were responsible for 631 million tonnes, equivalent to 60 percent of food waste, while the food service sector was responsible for 290 tonnes and the retail sector for 131 tonnes. Yet, cities have a major role to play both in terms of challenges and solutions to global food waste. With 70% of food consumption occurring at urban level and food waste representing the greatest component of municipal solid waste, food waste is largely an urban problem.

Therefore, reducing food loss and waste is not only critical to achieving food security and circularity is cities but is also a key climate action strategy. Food loss and waste generates 8-10 per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and is a major methane hotspot. As of 2022, only 21 countries have included food loss and/or waste reduction in their national climate plans (NDCs). The 2025 NDCs revision process provides a crucial opportunity to raise climate ambition by integrating food loss and waste targets and in particular circular food city plans and policies into the NDCs 3.0.

To address these issues and mark the second annual International Day of Zero Waste, UNEP launched its Food Waste Index Report 2024 on 27 March 2024. The report provides the latest global estimates on food waste, occurring at retail and consumer level. Addressing food waste is an important facet of embracing zero waste and tackling the climate crisis. The Food Waste Index Report is tracking country-level progress to halve food waste by 2030 (SDG 12.3). First published in 2021, the current report builds on recent and greater datasets and provides an update on the scale of food wasted worldwide, as well as a focus on multi-stakeholder collaboration through Public Private Partnerships (PPP) as a solution.

Building on the successful launch of the report on 27 March, this event will serve as a re-launch of the Food Waste Index Report 2024, with particular attention as to actions that local governments can take for. The first part of this event will include 5 minutes of opening remarks, followed by a 10 minutes keynote presentation on the key Report’s findings. We will then move to a 30-minute panel discussion during which business representatives, country, and city food waste experts will highlight how the Report’s findings can be leveraged to adopt circular food waste solutions in cities and raise consumer awareness to cut household food waste. This will be followed by a 20minutes Q&A with the audience and 5minutes wrap up and closing.