Your family throws away 60 kg of food every year

BarcelonaEach Catalan family threw away, on average, 63 kilograms of usable food last year. And that wasted food could have been used by 300,000 people. Or, to put it another way, it would cover the needs of 14% of the population at risk of poverty. These are the calculations made this Monday by the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food, which until now did not exclude food thrown away at homes, but rather accumulated it in a count that included waste from restaurants and shops.

The minister of the department, Òscar Ordeig, has reacted to these data by calling for "shaking the conscience of consumers to "break cultural patterns." That is, choosing to buy what is really intended to be eaten. Behind the waste, said Ordeig, there is a social impact for those NA~

The latest available data was from a report prepared by the Catalan Waste Agency in 2011. Now, for the first time, the Ministry of Agriculture has analysed food waste alone, using organic waste from more than 500 homes. The results indicate that each person throws away around 21.5 kilos of food each year. With an average of three inhabitants per home, each family wastes around 63 kilos per year.

Strategic plan

The total amount of food thrown away in homes in Catalonia amounts to 173.96 thousand tonnes. Transferred to the shopping basket, this means that each family has thrown away up to 63 unused packets of rice, 30 whole cheeses or more than 500 hamburgers.

Although no new data on food waste in restaurants and shops have been made public, Minister Ordeig has stated that homes are the area where most food is wasted. "We have a lot of work to do in food and environmental sustainability, because we must not forget that each kilo of food thrown away has previously required a large consumption of water and energy that makes no sense to waste," he said. In this regard, the Minister recalled that the department is working on a strategic plan for the prevention of food losses and waste with plans to present it within a year.

At the same time, Ordeig has pointed out that the Government is drafting the regulations to implement the law on the prevention of food losses and waste, which is committed to "short marketing circuits, that unconsumed food has a second life and that all agents in the food sector work together to reduce food waste." "The objective is to achieve zero waste, the circular economy and sustainability for the entire chain," the minister summarised.