‘4.2 bn meals thrown away in Italy in a year’

Rome: A reported 1,260 billion meals are thrown away in a year worldwide, including 4.26 billion in Italy, the Waste Watcher Observatory said Sunday on the fifth International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste.

The observatory in particular registered a rise in waste among Italian families this year.

It calculated the average weight of meals as 500g estimated by the Food Waste Index Report 2024 of the UN Environment Programme, and considered the average increase of the Italian population in food poverty which had reached 6 million (10% of the population), according to figures provided by ISTAT and Catholic charity Caritas, estimating that approximately 4.2 million meals were wasted in Italy.

The meals could have fed nearly 4 million people, the observatory said.

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