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How the world wastes hundreds of billions of meals in a year, in three charts

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Saturday, May 4, 2024

The UN reports that over a trillion dollars worth of food gets thrown out every year worldwide. | Mykola Miakshykov/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images Think twice before throwing out your leftovers A billion meals are wasted every single day, according to a recent report from the United Nations. And that’s a conservative estimate. It’s not just food down the drain, but money, too. The 2024 UN Food Waste Index report — which measured food waste at the consumer and retail level across more than 100 countries — found that over a trillion dollars worth of food gets thrown out every year, from households to grocery stores to farms, all across the globe. Such waste takes a significant toll on the environment. The process of producing food — the raising of animals, the land and water use, and the subsequent pollution that goes with it — is horribly intensive on the planet. Food waste squanders those efforts, and then makes it worse: as it rots in landfills, it creates methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Food waste alone is responsible for an estimated 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. To put that into perspective, if food waste were a country, it would be third in emissions produced, behind only the United States and China. Perhaps the most immediate harm, though, is the more than 780 million people who went hungry around the world in 2022, even as hundreds of billions of meals were wasted that same year. The world has become more efficient at producing a lot of food, so much so that there’s more than enough to go around for everyone. But in 2022, nearly 30 percent of people were moderately or severely food insecure, defined by the Food and Agricultural Organization as lacking regular access to safe and nutritious food. Food waste reduction is “an opportunity to reduce costs and to tackle some of the biggest environmental and social issues of our time: fighting climate change and addressing food insecurity,” the authors of the report write. Food waste might seem like an easy problem to solve — just stop wasting food. But in order to snuff food waste out, individuals, businesses, and policymakers alike will need to make some serious changes — and those changes will look different for each country. Global food waste is not just a consumer-level problem, but also a nasty side effect of inefficient food systems that have environmental and social implications. The UN has the goal of slashing food waste in half by 2030. For that to happen, the authors of the Food Waste Index say there’s one crucial step all countries need to do: data collection. You can’t stop wasting food until you know how much food you’re wasting. How do you measure food waste? According to the report — which was spearheaded by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and co-authored by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a UK-based climate organization — households contributed to 60 percent of all food waste generated globally in 2022, compared to nearly 28 percent for food service and a little under 13 percent for retailers. However, it’s important to note that there was a lot more usable data for food waste in households than there was for food service or retail — and that’s especially true for low-income and middle-income countries. The report uses a three-level methodology with each level increasing in accuracy and utility. The first level is an estimate using preexisting food waste data from countries. For countries that haven’t yet started collecting data on food waste, UNEP took data from other nearby countries that had similar income levels and then extrapolated that information to create estimates. These figures are a helpful start to understanding the scale at which food waste may exist in a country, but the report emphasizes that most of the Level 1 estimates are not accurate enough to use beyond that. To clarify which estimates can be used for understanding the scale of a problem and which can be used beyond that, the report also assigned a “confidence” rating to each Level 1 estimate — high, medium, low, very low, or no rating. Only 11 countries were assigned a high confidence rating for household food waste estimates. Of these, Saudi Arabia had the highest amount of household food waste per person annually, at a little over 231 pounds per person. Bhutan had the lowest, at just under 42 pounds per person. The next two levels of the methodology lay out a framework in which countries can track their food waste generation. Level 2 is the recommended, baseline approach for countries and requires an actual measurement, rather than just an estimate, of food waste that is suitable for tracking food waste at a national level. Level 3 goes beyond that and gives guidances for how countries can include additional helpful data, like where wasted food goes, how much of food waste is edible, and food loss from manufacturing. While some organizations and institutions define food waste as edible food mass, the report includes both the edible and inedible parts of food. That may make it seem as if the estimations are inflated, but what’s considered edible and inedible can differ from culture to culture — think peels of fruits, or certain parts of animal meat. They also acknowledge that it’s difficult to measure edible food waste without also measuring the inedible parts, and most countries haven’t done so. Notably, the report only includes what gets thrown out at the household, retail, and food service level. That means that the Food Waste Index does not measure “food loss,” which is what gets lost in the production part of the process at farms and factories, as well as in transportation. According to the FAO, an estimated 13 percent of the world’s food is lost in the supply chain prior to hitting shelves. Why does food get wasted? The report also found that on average, household food waste in high-income, upper-middle income, and lower-income countries didn’t differ too much, but the reasons why waste happens will differ across these groups. Variables like access to electricity and refrigeration, dietary habits and behaviors, food distribution infrastructure, country temperature and so forth can all contribute to a country’s food waste levels. While there didn’t seem to be a relationship between a country’s income grouping and household food waste levels, a household’s income within that country — along with other factors — could play a part in their food waste habits. “Just as we expect the reasons for waste to vary between countries, we expect it to vary between households within the same country,” said Hamish Forbes, a senior analyst at WRAP and one of the authors of the 2024 Food Waste Index, via email. “Factors such as kitchen infrastructure, cooking skills/knowledge, cultural norms, time availability, disposable income and so on are all likely to play a role.” In the United States, the Food Waste Index found that food waste is happening mostly at the household and food service level. If we want to get those numbers down, it’s going to take every participant in our food system — from consumers all the way to big businesses and retailers. How can we stop wasting food? It would be reductive to leave the burden of solving food waste and loss to everyday people, when the problem requires solutions across industries, food sectors, governance, and consumers. “The problem is everywhere and requires solutions everywhere,” the report authors write. As of 2022, only 21 countries had made commitments to reducing food waste or food loss as a part of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the goals to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change as a part of the Paris Agreement. But out of those 21, only two countries had submitted NDCs to tackle both food waste and food loss, according to a report by WRAP. Those two countries were Jordan and Namibia, according to Forbes. Commitments are a great first step, but what comes next? “There’s a well-known saying that ‘what gets measured gets managed’ and this is very evident in the food loss and waste space,” said Forbes. He added that measurement can show the true scale of our food wastage across different sectors, and in turn, it can also help policymakers identify solutions and where to implement them. “Beyond just measuring the total amount of food waste, measurements in countries, cities or even businesses can identify ‘hotspots’,” Forbes told me. “For example, if I measure food waste in my restaurant and see from that data that most diners are leaving some of their potato fries, then I’m probably serving too much and I can reduce that wastage.” One country that’s made progress is the United Kingdom. In 2005, the UK established the Courtauld Commitment, a series of voluntary agreements between the governments, organizations, and businesses within the UK to reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improve water management. The food waste reduction policies from these agreements work on all parts of the food system: supporting waste management on farms, giving guidance to food service and retail sectors on food redistribution, implementing consumer campaigns, and more. As a result, the UK has reduced per capita food waste by 23 percent in total from 2007 to 2018. Dana Gunders, the executive director of the US-based food waste reduction nonprofit ReFED, told me that in the US, there are a few ways our government can change the consumer environment so that people waste less food. One solution is passing the Food Date Labeling Act. You’ve probably found yourself squinting at a carton of eggs that’s been in your fridge for an unknown amount of time, scouring for the “sell by,” “use by,” or “best by” date and debating how safe it is to consume. As of now, the US doesn’t have a standardized labeling process for food, which has translated into consumer confusion around food quality that leads to throwing out meals that are perfectly safe to eat. Creating a standardized label system with clearer phrasing could help consumers make better choices around food usage. Then there’s Gunder’s big legislative wish: a ban on sending food to landfills, a policy that’s in the jurisdiction of states. According to ReFED, some states and municipalities have enacted policies around limiting, diverting, or banning organic material like food from entering landfills. Gunders also wants to see food service sectors and retailers like grocery stores track their food waste — again, better collection of data helps craft better solutions. She also thinks grocery stores could improve their food donation system. There are some up-and-coming intermediaries, like Too Good To Go, which connects donations from grocery stores and restaurants with consumers. But having a more robust policy that isn’t opt-in can help redistribute perfectly edible food and make sure it doesn’t go to waste. “All companies should have a solid donation policy that is across all of their locations, across all product types,” Gunders said. “Sometimes you have grocers who are great at donating bread, but they really don’t donate milk or dairy or meat or seafood. And so there are ways to do that, and some of the grocers who are best at donating are doing that.” Of course, consumers themselves play a role. Planning meals and being more careful around purchasing food, preserving food in freezers, finding ways to take leftover ingredients and making them into a meal — all are ways individuals can personally reduce their food waste. As for food waste and hunger, the report states that “reducing food waste can increase food availability for those who need it.” Forbes told me that how food loss and waste relates to hunger will depend on the sector we’re focusing on. It’ll take a lot more than simply slashing food waste to fix hunger — which is ultimately a symptom of poverty — but reducing food waste by diverting perfectly edible foods to those who need it can certainly help.

A picture of discarded tangerines in a landfill in Dnipro, Ukraine. — The UN reports that over a trillion dollars worth of food gets thrown out every year worldwide. | Mykola Miakshykov/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Think twice before throwing out your leftovers

A billion meals are wasted every single day, according to a recent report from the United Nations. And that’s a conservative estimate.

It’s not just food down the drain, but money, too. The 2024 UN Food Waste Index report — which measured food waste at the consumer and retail level across more than 100 countries — found that over a trillion dollars worth of food gets thrown out every year, from households to grocery stores to farms, all across the globe.

Such waste takes a significant toll on the environment. The process of producing food — the raising of animals, the land and water use, and the subsequent pollution that goes with it — is horribly intensive on the planet. Food waste squanders those efforts, and then makes it worse: as it rots in landfills, it creates methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Food waste alone is responsible for an estimated 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. To put that into perspective, if food waste were a country, it would be third in emissions produced, behind only the United States and China.

Perhaps the most immediate harm, though, is the more than 780 million people who went hungry around the world in 2022, even as hundreds of billions of meals were wasted that same year. The world has become more efficient at producing a lot of food, so much so that there’s more than enough to go around for everyone. But in 2022, nearly 30 percent of people were moderately or severely food insecure, defined by the Food and Agricultural Organization as lacking regular access to safe and nutritious food.

Food waste reduction is “an opportunity to reduce costs and to tackle some of the biggest environmental and social issues of our time: fighting climate change and addressing food insecurity,” the authors of the report write.

Food waste might seem like an easy problem to solve — just stop wasting food. But in order to snuff food waste out, individuals, businesses, and policymakers alike will need to make some serious changes — and those changes will look different for each country. Global food waste is not just a consumer-level problem, but also a nasty side effect of inefficient food systems that have environmental and social implications.

The UN has the goal of slashing food waste in half by 2030. For that to happen, the authors of the Food Waste Index say there’s one crucial step all countries need to do: data collection. You can’t stop wasting food until you know how much food you’re wasting.

How do you measure food waste?

According to the report — which was spearheaded by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and co-authored by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a UK-based climate organization — households contributed to 60 percent of all food waste generated globally in 2022, compared to nearly 28 percent for food service and a little under 13 percent for retailers. However, it’s important to note that there was a lot more usable data for food waste in households than there was for food service or retail — and that’s especially true for low-income and middle-income countries.

The report uses a three-level methodology with each level increasing in accuracy and utility. The first level is an estimate using preexisting food waste data from countries. For countries that haven’t yet started collecting data on food waste, UNEP took data from other nearby countries that had similar income levels and then extrapolated that information to create estimates. These figures are a helpful start to understanding the scale at which food waste may exist in a country, but the report emphasizes that most of the Level 1 estimates are not accurate enough to use beyond that.

To clarify which estimates can be used for understanding the scale of a problem and which can be used beyond that, the report also assigned a “confidence” rating to each Level 1 estimate — high, medium, low, very low, or no rating. Only 11 countries were assigned a high confidence rating for household food waste estimates. Of these, Saudi Arabia had the highest amount of household food waste per person annually, at a little over 231 pounds per person. Bhutan had the lowest, at just under 42 pounds per person.

A bar graph titled “Household food waste per person, around the world”. Below the title, it says “Saudi Arabia has the highest waste rate and Bhutan the lowest among the 11 countries deemed by researchers to have strong household data on food waste.” The eleven countries are, in order from most waste to least waste, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Qatar, Jamaica, Ghana, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, Japan, and Bhutan.

The next two levels of the methodology lay out a framework in which countries can track their food waste generation. Level 2 is the recommended, baseline approach for countries and requires an actual measurement, rather than just an estimate, of food waste that is suitable for tracking food waste at a national level. Level 3 goes beyond that and gives guidances for how countries can include additional helpful data, like where wasted food goes, how much of food waste is edible, and food loss from manufacturing.

While some organizations and institutions define food waste as edible food mass, the report includes both the edible and inedible parts of food. That may make it seem as if the estimations are inflated, but what’s considered edible and inedible can differ from culture to culture — think peels of fruits, or certain parts of animal meat. They also acknowledge that it’s difficult to measure edible food waste without also measuring the inedible parts, and most countries haven’t done so.

Notably, the report only includes what gets thrown out at the household, retail, and food service level. That means that the Food Waste Index does not measure “food loss,” which is what gets lost in the production part of the process at farms and factories, as well as in transportation. According to the FAO, an estimated 13 percent of the world’s food is lost in the supply chain prior to hitting shelves.

Why does food get wasted?

The report also found that on average, household food waste in high-income, upper-middle income, and lower-income countries didn’t differ too much, but the reasons why waste happens will differ across these groups. Variables like access to electricity and refrigeration, dietary habits and behaviors, food distribution infrastructure, country temperature and so forth can all contribute to a country’s food waste levels.

Bar graph titled “How much food people waste at home in six major regions of the world”. It also says “Humans waste a lot of food but often for different reasons. In low-income countries, insufficient refrigeration can drive waste, whereas people in high-income countries tend to be less concerned with waste and resource use.” From most waste to least, the regions are Latin America/the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, Northern America, Eastern/Southeastern Asia, and Eastern Europe.

While there didn’t seem to be a relationship between a country’s income grouping and household food waste levels, a household’s income within that country — along with other factors — could play a part in their food waste habits.

“Just as we expect the reasons for waste to vary between countries, we expect it to vary between households within the same country,” said Hamish Forbes, a senior analyst at WRAP and one of the authors of the 2024 Food Waste Index, via email. “Factors such as kitchen infrastructure, cooking skills/knowledge, cultural norms, time availability, disposable income and so on are all likely to play a role.”

In the United States, the Food Waste Index found that food waste is happening mostly at the household and food service level. If we want to get those numbers down, it’s going to take every participant in our food system — from consumers all the way to big businesses and retailers.

A pie chart titled “Where food gets wasted in the United States.” Below the title it says “Most consumer-level food waste occurs in the home or in foodservice.” Figures represent annual food waste per person. Homes waste is 160.9 pounds, food service wastes 163.1 pounds, and retail is 26.5 pounds.

How can we stop wasting food?

It would be reductive to leave the burden of solving food waste and loss to everyday people, when the problem requires solutions across industries, food sectors, governance, and consumers. “The problem is everywhere and requires solutions everywhere,” the report authors write.

As of 2022, only 21 countries had made commitments to reducing food waste or food loss as a part of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the goals to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change as a part of the Paris Agreement. But out of those 21, only two countries had submitted NDCs to tackle both food waste and food loss, according to a report by WRAP. Those two countries were Jordan and Namibia, according to Forbes.

Commitments are a great first step, but what comes next? “There’s a well-known saying that ‘what gets measured gets managed’ and this is very evident in the food loss and waste space,” said Forbes. He added that measurement can show the true scale of our food wastage across different sectors, and in turn, it can also help policymakers identify solutions and where to implement them.

“Beyond just measuring the total amount of food waste, measurements in countries, cities or even businesses can identify ‘hotspots’,” Forbes told me. “For example, if I measure food waste in my restaurant and see from that data that most diners are leaving some of their potato fries, then I’m probably serving too much and I can reduce that wastage.”

One country that’s made progress is the United Kingdom. In 2005, the UK established the Courtauld Commitment, a series of voluntary agreements between the governments, organizations, and businesses within the UK to reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improve water management. The food waste reduction policies from these agreements work on all parts of the food system: supporting waste management on farms, giving guidance to food service and retail sectors on food redistribution, implementing consumer campaigns, and more. As a result, the UK has reduced per capita food waste by 23 percent in total from 2007 to 2018.

Dana Gunders, the executive director of the US-based food waste reduction nonprofit ReFED, told me that in the US, there are a few ways our government can change the consumer environment so that people waste less food.

One solution is passing the Food Date Labeling Act. You’ve probably found yourself squinting at a carton of eggs that’s been in your fridge for an unknown amount of time, scouring for the “sell by,” “use by,” or “best by” date and debating how safe it is to consume. As of now, the US doesn’t have a standardized labeling process for food, which has translated into consumer confusion around food quality that leads to throwing out meals that are perfectly safe to eat. Creating a standardized label system with clearer phrasing could help consumers make better choices around food usage.

Then there’s Gunder’s big legislative wish: a ban on sending food to landfills, a policy that’s in the jurisdiction of states. According to ReFED, some states and municipalities have enacted policies around limiting, diverting, or banning organic material like food from entering landfills.

Gunders also wants to see food service sectors and retailers like grocery stores track their food waste — again, better collection of data helps craft better solutions. She also thinks grocery stores could improve their food donation system. There are some up-and-coming intermediaries, like Too Good To Go, which connects donations from grocery stores and restaurants with consumers. But having a more robust policy that isn’t opt-in can help redistribute perfectly edible food and make sure it doesn’t go to waste.

“All companies should have a solid donation policy that is across all of their locations, across all product types,” Gunders said. “Sometimes you have grocers who are great at donating bread, but they really don’t donate milk or dairy or meat or seafood. And so there are ways to do that, and some of the grocers who are best at donating are doing that.”

Of course, consumers themselves play a role. Planning meals and being more careful around purchasing food, preserving food in freezers, finding ways to take leftover ingredients and making them into a meal — all are ways individuals can personally reduce their food waste.

As for food waste and hunger, the report states that “reducing food waste can increase food availability for those who need it.” Forbes told me that how food loss and waste relates to hunger will depend on the sector we’re focusing on. It’ll take a lot more than simply slashing food waste to fix hunger — which is ultimately a symptom of poverty — but reducing food waste by diverting perfectly edible foods to those who need it can certainly help.

Read the full story here.

Photos courtesy of

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Sometimes the answers to seemingly intractable environmental problems are found in nature itself. Take the growing challenge of plastic waste. Jacqueline Prawira, an MIT senior in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), has developed biodegradable, plastic-like materials from fish offal, as featured in a recent segment on the CBS show “The Visioneers with Zay Harding.” “We basically made plastics to be too good at their job. That also means the environment doesn’t know what to do with this, because they simply won’t degrade,” Prawira told Harding. “And now we’re literally drowning in plastic. By 2050, plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean.” “The Visioneers” regularly highlights environmental innovators. The episode featuring Prawira premiered during a special screening at Climate Week NYC on Sept. 24.Her inspiration came from the Asian fish market her family visits. Once the fish they buy are butchered, the scales are typically discarded. “But I also started noticing they’re actually fairly strong. They’re thin, somewhat flexible, and pretty lightweight, too, for their strength,” Prawira says. “And that got me thinking: Well, what other material has these properties? Plastics.” She transformed this waste product into a transparent, thin-film material that can be used for disposable products such as grocery bags, packaging, and utensils. Both her fish-scale material and a composite she developed don’t just mimic plastic — they address one of its biggest flaws. “If you put them in composting environments, [they] will degrade on their own naturally without needing much, if any, external help,” Prawira says. This isn’t Prawira’s first environmental innovation. Working in DMSE Professor Yet-Ming Chiang’s lab, she helped develop a low-carbon process for making cement — the world’s most widely used construction material, and a major emitter of carbon dioxide. The process, called silicate subtraction, enables compounds to form at lower temperatures, cutting fossil fuel use. Prawira and her co-inventors in the Chiang lab are also using the method to extract valuable lithium with zero waste. The process is patented and is being commercialized through the startup Rock Zero. For her achievements, Prawira recently received the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, awarded to undergraduates pursuing careers in science, mathematics, or engineering. In her “Visioneers” interview, she shared her hope for more sustainable ways of living. “I’m hoping that we can have daily lives that can be more in sync with the environment,” Prawira said. “So you don’t always have to choose between the convenience of daily life and having to help protect the environment.”

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Chemicals

Britain missing out on potential £2bn recycling industry by exporting plastic waste

Exclusive: Government failure to close loophole allows 600,000 tonnes to be shipped abroad each yearA plastic recycling industry potentially worth £2bn and 5,000 jobs is dying in the UK because of government failure to close a loophole that allows 600,000 tonnes of plastic waste to be exported each year.The Guardian can reveal that in the past two years 21 plastic recycling and processing factories across the UK have shut down due to the scale of exports, the cheap price of virgin plastic and an influx of cheap plastic from Asia, according to data gathered by industry insiders. Continue reading...

A plastic recycling industry potentially worth £2bn and 5,000 jobs is dying in the UK because of government failure to close a loophole which allows 600,000 tonnes of plastic waste to be exported each year.The Guardian can reveal that in the past two years 21 plastic recycling and processing factories across the UK have shut down due to the scale of our exports, the cheap price of virgin plastic and an influx of cheap plastic from Asia, according to data gathered by industry insiders.Britain’s exports of plastic waste to developing countries increased by 84% in the first half of this year, in what critics say is unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism.In particular, UK exports soared to Indonesia – a country struggling with an environmental crisis from plastic pollution – amounting to more than 24,000 tonnes. The total plastic waste exports in the first half of the year came to 317,747 tonnes.Used packaging is sorted at a Lampton recycling centre in London. Across the country 21 such factories have closed in the past two years. Photograph: Peter Dazeley/Getty ImagesExporting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of plastic waste to countries without the capability to process it properly increases the chance of serious environmental pollution as well as putting the lives of waste workers at risk.James Mcleary, managing director of Biffa polymers, said the industry was facing challenges and units were closing across the country.Plastic recycling facilities that have closed in the past two years include Biffa’s Sunderland factory, which had capacity to process 39,000 tonnes each year of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) plastic – used in packaging – and three Viridor facilities. Vanden Recycling is also closing its plastics processing site in Whittlesey, Peterborough.Keeping the waste material collected from households within the UK to be cleaned, sorted, processed and turned into recycled products, is better environmentally, captures the carbon within the plastic, and creates jobs and growth, experts say.But policymakers have not made the key changes needed to stop incentivising plastic waste exports.I don’t want to wonder if there is a boy whose life has been wasted somewhere because of me throwing something in a binMcleary said the continued export of waste plastic should be an affront to our civilised society. He cited the deaths of 200 young people in Turkey that were exposed earlier this year by ISIG Meclisi, which carried out the first ever analysis of workplace deaths in the country’s recycling industry. The UK was the largest exporter of plastic waste to Turkey in 2023.The investigation, called Boy Wasted, revealed that two people are crushed, ripped, or burned to death in the sector every month, and that this has been the case non-stop for the past 10 years.Mcleary said there was a need for a level playing field for the UK plastic recycling industry. “I don’t like closing plants, it’s jobs and it’s people lives,” he said.“Fundamentally I believe you need to take responsibility for our waste ourselves. It is just common sense as a human being. I don’t want my rubbish to end up in Malaysia. I don’t want to wonder if there is a boy whose life has been wasted somewhere because of me throwing something in a bin outside my house.A waste worker at a landfill site near Istanbul. The UK is the biggest exporter of plastic waste to Turkey. Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA“There are lines as a civilised society we should not cross – it is not acceptable.”Mcleary said the loophole that made it cheaper for companies to export plastic rather than keep it in the UK needed to be closed. “We are asking for a level playing field. We don’t want the market tilted towards us.”“This has been pointed out over a number of years by ourselves and others. Yet today we are in a perfect storm and factories are closing.”skip past newsletter promotionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionHe welcomed the UK’s plastic packaging tax, which is imposed on producers who fail to include at least 30% of recycled plastic in their products, as a way of driving demand to use our own stock of plastic waste in the UK. But he wants it to be more ambitious by raising the requirement for products to have a minimum recycled content to 50% by 2030 to encourage manufacturers incorporate more of it into their products and reduce the use of virgin plastic.Building a UK plastic recycling industry to keep the plastic waste thrown out by householders within the country had the potential to become a £2bn industry, hiring 2,000 people directly and 3,000 indirectly and would also restore public confidence in recycling, Mcleary said.“People in the UK should care where their plastic goes,” he added. “If they think they are recycling they should know it is being recycled, and know that it is being recycled in a responsible fashion.”Viridor has closed three plastic recycling factories in the past three years; in Avonmouth, Skelmersdale and this year its Rochester sorting plant.A UK recycling plant sorts plastic waste into bales, ready to be processed. Photograph: Teamjackson/Getty ImagesAn industry source said it was important that policymakers started seeing waste as critical infrastructure.“If we were to stop exporting plastic waste, and we were to meet our increased recycling target of a 65% recycling rate for municipal waste by 2035, we would need to build 400 new factories across the UK – 20 of them would be sorting facilities and 20 would be processing facilities turning the material back into products,” the source said.“This is a key growth area and has a carbon benefit because it stops the plastic being incinerated and used in energy for waste.“But the risk is now that we are exporting material and the investment and the jobs to other countries.”The government said it was committed to cleaning up the nation and cracking down on plastic waste.“For too long plastic waste has littered our streets, polluted Britain’s waterways, and threatened our wildlife,” a spokesperson said. “Our packaging reforms will collectively underpin £10bn worth of investment in new sorting and processing facilities, while delivering the deposit return scheme will ensure more plastic is recycled and not chucked away as litter or left to rot in landfill.”

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UK plastic waste exports to developing countries rose 84% in a year, data shows

Campaigners say increase in exports mostly to Malaysia and Indonesia is ‘unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism’Britain’s exports of plastic waste to developing countries have soared by 84% in the first half of this year compared with last year, according to an analysis of trade data carried out for the Guardian.Campaigners described the rise in exports, mostly to Malaysia and Indonesia, as “unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism”. Continue reading...

Britain’s exports of plastic waste to developing countries have soared by 84% in the first half of this year compared with last year, according to an analysis of trade data carried out for the Guardian.Campaigners described the rise in exports, mostly to Malaysia and Indonesia, as “unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism”.In 2023, the EU agreed to ban exports of waste to poorer nations outside a group of mainly rich countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The ban comes into force in November 2026 for two and a half years and can be extended. The UK does not have a similar ban in place.Data analysed by the The Last Beach Cleanup, a US group campaigning to halt plastic pollution, showed that the increase in UK exports in the first half of 2025 was mainly to Indonesia (24,006 tonnes in 2025, up from 525 tonnes in 2024) and Malaysia (28,667 tonnes, up from 18,872 tonnes in 2024).Total plastic waste exports remained relatively high in the first half of 2024 and 2025, at 319,407 and 317,647 tonnes respectively. The percentage of UK plastic waste going directly to non-OECD countries was 20% of total plastic waste exports in 2025, up from 11% in 2024.The Last Beach Cleanup analysed data from the UN Comtrade database to reach its findings. Jan Dell, who works for the group, accused UK ministers of “hypocrisy” by failing to ban exports to poorer nations.“The UK is hypocritically saying, ‘we’re part of the high ambition coalition’, at the plastics talks. But behind the scenes, it is refusing to set a date to stop exporting to poorer countries,” she said. “We see it is increasing exports of its own plastic waste to places like Malaysia and Indonesia.”She added: “It is unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism.”After the collapse of the UN plastic treaty talks in August, Emma Hardy, under-secretary of state at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said she was “hugely disappointed” an agreement had not been reached but was proud of the UK’s work towards an ambitious treaty.Britain was part of a “high ambition” coalition of nations calling for the treaty to include binding obligations on reducing plastic production and consumption, she said.Campaigners are calling for the UK, one of the top three countries exporting plastic waste, at about 600,000 tonnes a year, to follow the EU and ban exports to non-OECD countries. They also want to close a loophole that makes it cheaper to export plastic waste rather than recycle it in the UK.Plastic products, such as these found in Klang, Selangor in June, are often fly-tipped from factories processing imported plastic waste in Malaysia. Photograph: Basel Action NetworkThe Conservative government said in 2023 that it intended to ban plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries – but it never happened.Wong Pui Yi, a Malaysia-based consultant for Basel Action Network, a group championing global environmental health and justice, said there were “good guys and bad guys” in the waste trade.“A lot of waste traders are looking to reduce costs,” she said. “If waste falls into the hands of the bad actors, one of the easiest ways to reduce costs is to avoid environmental controls. In developing countries, it is easier to avoid environmental controls due to weaker laws and lower enforcement capacity.”In July, the UK’s exports of plastic waste to Malaysia dropped to 2.8% (1,500 tonnes), most likely due to the country’s new import restrictions. But as one country bans or tightens imports, as happened with China in 2018, the trade shifts elsewhere.The rise in UK plastic exports to Asia is likely to be an underestimate, experts say, because a lot goes to the Netherlands and other European countries where it can be shipped on. The UK also exports plastic to Turkey.James McLeary, the managing director of Biffa Polymers, a UK recycling firm, said the UK should take responsibility for its plastic waste.“It is just common sense as a human being” he said. “I don’t want my rubbish to end up in Malaysia. I don’t want to wonder if there is a boy whose life is wasted somewhere because of me throwing something in a bin outside my house.”Earlier this month, an investigation called Boy Wasted revealed that, for the last decade, two people were crushed, ripped, or burned to death in the recycling sector in Turkey every month.Adnan Khan, a Canadian journalist whose work on refugee labour in Turkey sparked the investigation, said that while Turkey had a licence system for recycling plastic waste, “my research shows that it is pretty easy to get a licence and the oversight is low. It’s a broken system.”All EU plastic waste exports should be banned to anywhere outside the EU, he said. “I would go further and say every country should take care of its own trash.”Defra did not respond to a request for comment.

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