Data is Beautiful

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The enormous scale of global food waste. (cdn.statcdn.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/dataisbeautiful

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[–] Stern 53 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Per capita is the only relevant stat here and its all over the place.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah this almost seems like one of those intentionally misleading at first glance kind of graphs. Once you put a second thought into it why would it be surprising that some of the most populated countries produce more waste?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Richer countries wasting more food, because it’s cheap and abundant makes sense. Brazil has the highest food waste though.

Might this also be connected with availability of food and climate? If food grows all year round and goes bad faster because of a warm and humid climate, it could explain it.

Food waste can happen at many different stages. It might not be economically viable to collect the harvest, if prices are too low. There might not be sufficient transport, storage, and processing available to actually use the food before it goes bad. All of that happens before food even reaches the shop or market.

Growing your own food plays a role in Russia. Many people have their little gardens where they grow stuff for their own use. The amount of waste is possibly much lower from that.

[–] toofpic 9 points 2 months ago

You're probably right, but there are other reasons. I don't have any statistics to support my point, but looking at a (comparatively) low level of food waste in Russia, I could come up with some ideas why (based on 37 years living there):

It's generally frowned upon if you throw away a lot of food. Probably because most of the population didn't have much on their table. And especially in Saint-Petersburg (Leningrad) which was blockaded, and where starvation was a real thing. My grandmother survived that, and she would always remind me of the struggle when I left something on my plate.
Most of the population lives in cities, and even if a poor family is living in some shitty town far away from everything, the conditions can be bad, but not "dirt floor" bad, and everyone has a fridge.
I never had to do that, and it was more of a Soviet Union thing, but in a winter, people used to hang out a bag of meat or something like that outside their kitchen window, because freezers were tiny, and that was the way to keep stuff from spoiling if you were lucky buying something cheap in bulk. I didn't see that for many years, but I'm from a big city and maybe it didn't get that much nicer elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm impressed that the amount per capita in France is significantly less than in Germany or UK, 61 kg vs. 78 kg (76 kg).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Might be related to the culture of cooking and meal preparation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes I'm thinking areas where it's more common to just walk to the local store and buy groceries every couple of days have less food waste than ones where you do bigger trips less often

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Also how much do you cook at once. In France it’s common to cook more smaller meals. The care about taste and sophistication is also highly developed in France. It would be interesting to see the numbers for Italy.