The app specialising in the recovery of unsold food, Too Good To Go, calculated that each French person throws away an average of 25 kilos of food per year, or “one meal per week per person,” according to a statement published on Monday. “Each French person throws away 25 kilos of food that is still edible every year, or one meal per week per person,” said Meleyne Rabot, the company’s new general manager. The company calculated the cost of this waste per person at nearly 157 euros of food thrown away each year.
Too Good To Go also estimates that by wasting one meal per week, each French person is responsible for wasting 1.3 km² of agricultural land and 390 litres of water, “more than 2 baths of water per week”. More than one kilo of CO2 equivalent is also emitted unnecessarily. The company bases its calculation on Eurostat data taken from a communication from the French Ministry of Ecological Transition last April, according to which French households threw away 1.7 million tonnes of edible waste in 2021.
More than 4 million tons of waste throughout the food chain
Consumers are the least virtuous link in the food chain in this area: 39% of food waste occurs at their level, compared to 22% at the level of primary production, i.e. on farms, 14% in agro-industrial processing, 12% at the distribution level and 13% in consumption outside the home, canteens or restaurants. Adding up the edible waste from each of these links, 4.3 million tonnes are thrown away throughout the entire food chain, according to the statistical service of this ministry (SDES).
The latter indicates that edible waste represents just under half of the food waste produced in France, weighing 8.8 million tonnes, quantities which also include bones or shells, for example. In this regard, “with 129 kg/inhabitant of food waste, France is just below the European average of 131 kg/inhabitant”, specified the SDES in April. Too Good To Go, created in 2016, claims to have “contributed to avoiding the waste of more than 350 million meals” and claims to have “100 million users and 170,000 active partners in 19 countries”.
Source: BFM TV
