Of the 121kg of consumer-level food thrown away each year for every person on the planet, more than half (74kg) is disposed of by households. Photo: AFP Seventeen per cent of the food available to consumers worldwide in 2019 – almost one billion tonnes – were thrown away by households, retailers, institutions and the hospitality industry, far more than previously suspected, the United Nations said recently. "The scale of the problem is just huge," Richard Swannell, development director of the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a non-profit that co-authored a special report, told AFP. "This is costly environmentally, socially and economically." If all the wasted food were packed into 40-tonne container trucks parked end-to-end, they would circle the Earth seven times, he said.