Food waste: perception is far from reality

During the last decade, waste has become a worldwide issue connected with environmental protection and climate change. One side of the problem stands on the facts that people are often not aware of the results of their actions as they really occur. Unfortunately, food waste isn’t an exception: here are some data.

According to a Movinga’s analysis, food waste is usually underestimated and the perception of how much of the food bought by private households get thrown away is far from reality:

Switzerland is the country where facts and realisation are the most distant: people are wasting 18% of the food they purchase, but they think they are throwing away just 5%, a gap of 13%.
In US there is the highest food waste rate: almost a quarter of purchased food is for the bin, but Northern Americans think they consume 85% of their grocery shopping.
UK is in the third place in the ranking that measures the discrepancy between actual and estimated food waste: Britons expect to misspend 5% of their food shopping, when in reality this percentage is three times higher.

[via: Statista]

The need of spreading awareness on the subject is clear as much as finding new ideas to help people avoid the problem such as different forms of packaging, reuse tutorials and educational programs.