A third of global food production goes to waste, says report

Washington

WITH millions of US households struggling to have enough to eat, and millions of tonnes of food being tossed in the garbage, food waste is increasingly being seen as a serious environmental and economic issue.

A report released on Wednesday shows that about 60 million tonnes of food is wasted a year in the United States, with an estimated value of US$162 billion. About 32 million tonnes of it end up in municipal landfills, at a cost of about US$1.5 billion a year to local governments.

The problem is not limited to the United States.

The report estimates that a third of all the food produced in the world is never consumed, and the total cost of that food waste could be as high a…