Every Portuguese spends 350 euros a year on food they don’t eat – Executive Digest

Every Portuguese spends 350 euros a year on food they don’t eat, wasting 184 kilograms of food every year, recalls a company that fights against waste and ‘ promoting the “No Food Waste Week” from today onwards.

In conjunction with International Food Loss and Waste Awareness Day, which falls on the 29th, the company “Too Good to Go” is promoting a week of awareness and movement from today to next Sunday (the 29th). waste problem.

Every Portuguese person wastes 2.38 kilos of food every week, warns the social impact platform that fights against food waste.

Statistical data shows that the 184 kilos of food that is wasted every year ‘per capita’ makes Portugal the fourth most wasteful country in the European Union.

“This food waste generates more than six kilos of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the unnecessary waste of 1,928 liters of water for every Portuguese person in a week”, warns the entity in a statement .

Basing the analysis on Eurostat data, “Too Good To Go” reveals that each person wastes more than 10 kilos of food per month.

And the company does more math: If each Portuguese person spends 336 euros on food per year at home, and if each person spends an average of 3,091 euros per year on food and drinks, 3.4% of the this budget “spent on food that. spent” every year.

“In a context where concern for our planet and the environment is becoming a priority, and the cost of living is increasingly important, waste reduction is an emergency”, clarifies the platform in the statement.

On September 29, the organization will “call attention to the amount of food waste and the work being done to eliminate it”.

“Half a kilo of food consumed by one person in a week may not seem like much, but if we multiply it by the 10 million inhabitants, in Portugal there are more than five million kilos spend them every week,” he warns.

The aim of the Week Without Food Waste is to “encourage people to take action”, said Maria Tolentino, director of Too Good to Go for Portugal, who was cited in the document.

During the anti-waste week, an initiative that includes nine of the 19 countries where “Too Good to Go” works, people are invited to follow daily advice to put the action at home.

The company also raises awareness and provides information and content to the brands and institutions it works with.

In a public manifesto, the company also wants combating food waste to be a priority on the political agenda.

The manifesto proposes three steps: the definition of “concrete and ambitious waste reduction goals” at the national level, waste accounting along the entire value chain, and the establishment of a mandatory hierarchy to achieve “reductions and visible results and effective.”

In the document, “Too Good to Go” says that it is aware that companies can be the main agent of influence, but emphasizes that legislation, “and everything related to regulatory aspects”, can “greatly accelerate solutions”.

The company, which was created in Denmark in 2016 when a group of friends saw all the uneaten food in a restaurant being thrown away, makes, through an application, the link between consumers and restaurants, supermarkets, grocery stores and hotels, allowing consumers to buy products that were not going to be used at lower prices.

This International Food and Waste Awareness Day was declared by UN General Assembly Resolution 74/209 on 19 December 2019.