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Last week, the United Nations (UN) released the most complete report ever created on the global problem of food waste. It found that the world wastes about 17% of all the food produced. That's about a billion tons of food a year.
A billion tons is a lot of food — it's over 2 trillion (2 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000) pounds or about 931 billion (931 ,000 ,000 ,000) kilograms. The report says that the amount wasted is roughly twice as much as earlier studies had suggested.
The report was produced by the UN's Environment Program (UNEP) and covered food waste around the world in 2019. The study showed a several different ways in which food was wasted — at home, in restaurants and in stores.
It turns out that by far, most food waste — about 61% — happens horse. On average, the amount of food thrown out at home works out to about 163 pounds (74 kilograms) for each person every year.
Restaurants were responsible for about 26% of the food wasted. The remaining 13% was thrown away by stores.
Many people thought rich countries were more likely to waste food than countries that were less rich. That turned out not to be true. One surprising discovery was that food was wasted at about the same rate in all but the poorest countries. (The UN had difficulty measuring food waste in the poorest countries.)
But people in richer countries may waste less food at home because they are eating out at restaurants more often. That certainly seems to be the case in the US, which has low waste numbers for homes, but quite high numbers for restaurants.
In some cases, labels might be causing food waste, the report said. People might be throwing away food even though it's still good to eat, simply because the container's "Best By" or "Sell By" date has passed. In poorer countries, food may be wasted because not all homes have a refrigerator.
Why is wasting food such a problem? For one thing, the report points out, hundreds of millions of people went hungry in 2019. Also, wasting food is really bad for the planet. Farming creates between 10% and 30% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions (排放) — the pollution that's making the climate crisis worse. So when food gets thrown out, the pollution is created for nothing.
The UNEP report says that it's important for countries to study food waste more carefully in order to figure out ways to solve the problem.
1. How many tons of food are wasted a year according to the UN report?2. Why is wasting food bad for the environment?
3. Read the following statement, underline the false part of it and explain the reason.
Labels might be causing food waste, because people might be throwing away food that is bad to eat.
4. Please briefly present what you can do in daily life to save food. (about 40 words)
