Recipes for the end of food waste: plan purchasing, more bulk sales and regulate offers

Garbage bins do not go hungry in Spain. Every year more than three million tons of food are wasted in the country, which represents an average of 72 kilograms per person, according to a recent report from the UN Environment Department (UNEP). Since the last legislature, the Government has pending approval of the law on the prevention of food losses and waste. But, as happened with a good number of regulations, its processing was truncated by the latest electoral advance.

The Council of Ministers again approved the bill in January, which is now being processed in the Cortes. The priority is that surplus food is used for human consumption and, when this is no longer possible due to health reasons, it is used for animal feed or to obtain compost and biofuels. To address this problem, experts advocate increasing bulk sales, more family planning when shopping, and regulating offers that encourage you to take more products than necessary.

The UN, through the Food Waste Index Report 2024, published last week, warns that beyond the direct effects of wasting food, waste and loss have an environmental footprint. It is estimated that it generates between 8% and 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions; according to the authors, it also has an impact on natural ecosystems that have to be converted to produce foods that in too many cases end up in trash.

Food waste is a three-pronged problem: “Economic, environmental and social.” And the report considers that it is “an opportunity to address some of the biggest environmental problems of these times”, such as the fight against climate change. The director of UNEP, Inger Andersen, defines food waste as a “global tragedy.” “The consequences of this unnecessary waste are causing substantial costs to the climate and nature,” the report details.

UN experts quantify the accumulated waste worldwide at more than 1 billion tons and estimate that a fifth of the food produced ends up in the trash. The global average waste per person is 132 kilos each year. Spain, with 72 kilos, does not come out very badly when compared to that figure. Nor, in the context of the European Union: it is the fifth country that wastes the least, only behind Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia. Portugal, with more than 160 kilograms per person per year, is at the extreme of the most food wasted.

The black hole: homes

However, there is a notable difference between the latest data from the Ministry of Agriculture, which estimates a waste of 25 kilos per person per year, and those in the report. This is due to the different methodology used, since the portfolio led by Minister Luis Planas only focuses on waste in households, while the UN collects all the waste that occurs throughout the food chain, from distribution until final consumption.

The great black hole They are homes. In Spain, for example, they absorb 84% of wasted food. On many occasions, food goes directly from the refrigerator to the bin, without even being cooked. Supermarkets and retail outlets are responsible for 10%, and the remaining 6% is discarded in places such as restaurants, school canteens or hotels.

How food is sold is one of the main reasons for waste in homes for the state coordinator of the NGO Food Justice, Jordi Menéndez. “When you go to the supermarket, many times there is no possibility of buying the amount of food you really need and you are forced to take larger containers,” he reasons, and demands that there be more alternatives to purchasing them in bulk. He also mentions commercial offers as a factor that prompts families to take more than necessary.

Not having good planning is another reason why food ends up in the trash, according to María González, director of the Enraíza Derechos organization that defends fair and sustainable food. “There are homes in which the fast pace of life prevents adequate food management and ends up not being consumed,” she says.

The future Spanish law will force establishments of more than 1,300 square meters to collaborate with food banks or NGOs to donate products through the creation of agreements. It also provides that bars and restaurants make it easier for customers to take away leftover food at no additional cost and encourage the sale of imperfect or imperfect products. ugly. Menéndez points to the distributors as responsible for not finding bad-looking food. “It's not that people reject the products ugly, is that in large stores they are not given the possibility at all. There are alternative spaces in which, if it is offered at a reasonable price, it will sell,” he argues.

Despite these measures, the law is not very ambitious to the director of Enraíza Derechos, since “it does not include some of the measures that were agreed upon before it declined.” “The fundamental demand is that much more be invested in prevention, to prevent a surplus of food from being generated,” he argues, and also requests that there be a “harmonization of criteria to measure waste.”

783 million people are hungry

On a global scale, waste in homes is 20 points lower than in Spain and represents 60%, while 28% is lost in places such as restaurants, school cafeterias or hotels and the remaining 12% in supermarkets and points of sale. retail. In addition, it emphasizes the need to reverse waste in a world in which there are 783 million people who suffer from hunger. Aware of this problem, the United Nations has as one of its Sustainable Development Goals, approved in 2016, Halve food waste by 2030.

Among the hundred countries analyzed in the study, there is hardly any difference in waste depending on economic development. In the homes of the richest, the waste is 81 kilos per year per person; in those of the intermediate levels, 88, and in those of the poorest, 86. From the rest of the spaces, such as restaurants, hotels, school cafeterias or in distribution, it has not been possible to collect enough data to make the comparison.

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