World News for Students of English

14-04-2021 15:00

According to the United Nations Environment Program, some 931 million tons of food went to waste in 2019.

Individual householders were responsible for more than a half of the amount, with the rest coming from retailers and the food service industry. New estimates show that about 17% of food available to consumers worldwide in 2019 ended up being wasted. UN analysts tracked the problem further up the supply chain, and the matter is even more urgent when considered that 14% of food production is lost before it reaches stores. Waste is happening at every point from field to the dinner table.

Food waste and loss are responsible for 10% of global emissions, and if it were a country, this discard would rank third in the world’s sources of greenhouse gases, after China and the US. However, the problem isn’t limited to the richest countries, and recent reports suggest that the amount of food wasted by consumers could be about double the previous estimate.

Difficult words: retailer (a person or business that sells goods to the public), supply chain (the whole process of making and selling goods, including every step from the supply of materials to the sale of the goods), discard (throwing away or getting rid of something).

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