"Eating out-of-home" shows up poor environmental performance | Umweltbundesamt

The biggest source of most food waste at present is agriculture: the planting and harvesting of fruit, vegetables and grains. Food consumption ranks second, in particular the waste from restaurants, employee canteens and catering events. Nearly half the food prepared for the away-from-home sector is disposed of prematurely. In numbers that means an annual 53.3 kilos of food per person in restaurants, canteen kitchens and at events, of which 23.6 kilos (44%) is thrown away before necessary. Effective measures to combat food waste should therefore begin in this sector. In the private household, "eating at home" sector, the quantity food per person bought every year is about 430 kilos, of which 17%, or 82 kilos, is discarded prematurely.

Foodstuffs come with considerable ecological baggage. The amount of food bought per person and year in Germany consumes the land area of half a football field, requires an amount of water that could fill 84 full bathtubs, and emits 3 tonnes of greenhouse gases, which is the same amount of CO₂ emissions produced on a roundtrip flight from Frankfurt to New York. When projected onto the 80 million people in Germany and the 505 million in the EU, these factors have an immense environmental impact.

Maria Krautzberger said, "The production of all our food requires cropland and water resources, both of which are precious and scarce resources worldwide. Food waste must be avoided as is it essential to the preservation of our livelihood. Less food waste also means less use of fertilisers and plant protection products in conventional agriculture."

The Federal Environment Agency believes that the voluntary agreements to reduce food waste between retailers and the food service industry such as envisioned in the Federal Government Waste Prevention Programme should be implemented as soon as possible. Legal standards and quality criteria concerning appearance and shape, and liability and hygiene regulations which lead to unnecessary food waste, must be reviewed with a view to their restriction or deletion. Waste prevention of foods such as meat and dairy would have a particularly great impact as these food products require 14 times the amount of land area per kilo produced than the area needed for plant-based products.