Food Waste

Every year, the world produces more food than it needs — and throws away nearly a fifth of it. Food is lost or wasted at every stage of its journey, from the field to the fork. This is not only a moral failure at a time when hundreds of millions go hungry. It is also one of the most significant and underestimated drivers of climate change.

Food is not a uniform material — it is perishable, seasonal, and enormously varied. Fresh produce, dairy, meat, and processed goods all have different storage requirements, temperature sensitivities, and shelf lives, which means that a single supply chain must manage radically different logistical demands simultaneously. In low-income countries, the losses happen early: inadequate cold storage, poor roads, and unreliable electricity mean that significant portions of harvests never reach markets at all. In wealthier countries, the losses are concentrated later: at retail level, where cosmetic standards and overstocking lead to systematic discard, and at home, where confusion over expiration labels, over-purchasing, and poor storage habits account for up to 60% of all food wasted. The costs of food waste are distributed unevenly across the chain: farmers absorb losses when produce is rejected for failing cosmetic standards, retailers build waste into their pricing models, and consumers ultimately pay through higher prices. No single actor has a strong enough incentive to fix a system that everyone, in different ways, has learned to live with.

Food is lost at every stage of its journey. Pick the one your team wants to dig into, then take it to your worksheet.