Human Wrongs Watch
‘From Wasted Economy to Wasted Planet: Why Changing Our Consumption Patterns is a Choice We Must Make!’
UNEP
Editorial by Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme*
As we sit down to lunch or dinner on this World Environment Day, it is important to consider this: one-third of all food produced globally each year – 300 million tonnes – is wasted. This waste costs the global economy a staggering one trillion dollars a year.
Industrialized regions account for almost half of the total. The food we discard is still fit for human consumption and could feed more than 800 million people in the world today.
This is just the tip of the waste iceberg, and serves as a proxy for the ‘ecological footprint’ of our entire global economy. Our global food system is responsible for 80 per cent of deforestation and is the largest single cause of species and biodiversity loss.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 