Each French person throws away an average of 25 kilos of food per year, according to Too Good To Go

Massive waste. The application specializing in the recovery of unsold food Too Good To Go has calculated that each French person throws away an average of 25 kilos of food each year. A total that is equivalent to “one meal per week per person”Meleyne Rabot, the company’s new CEO, told AFP. She estimated the cost of this waste for each person at nearly 157 euros of food thrown away per year.

Too Good To Go also estimates that by wasting one meal per week, each French person is responsible for the wasted use of 1.3 km2 of agricultural land and 390 litres of water, or “more than two bathtubs of water every week”. More than one kilo of CO2 equivalent is also emitted unnecessarily. The company bases its calculation on Eurostat data from a communication last April from the French Ministry of Ecological Transition, according to which 1.7 million tonnes of edible waste were thrown away by French households in 2021.

Consumers are the least virtuous link in the food chain in this regard: 39% of food waste occurs at their level, compared to 22% at the level of primary production (on farms), 14% at the level of agro-industrial processing, 12% at the level of distribution and 13% in consumption outside the home (canteens or restaurants).

By aggregating the edible waste from each of these links, 4.3 million tonnes are thrown away across the entire food chain, according to the statistical service of the Ministry of Ecological Transition. The latter specifies that edible waste represents a little less than half of the food waste produced in France, which represents 8.8 million tonnes.