According to the report Food Losses and Food Waste in Mexico: quantification and some proposals for public policy by the World Bank, Mexicans throw away more than 20.4 million tons of food each year.
The report, presented by Mexico’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), highlights that “CO2 emissions generated by the production of food that is wasted in Mexico is equivalent to the annual emissions from 14,754,584 cars (all vehicles in DF and the states of Mexico, Jalisco and Nuevo León together).”
It is estimated that 72% of food waste is generated in the first links of the production chain, from pre-harvest to distribution while the remaining 28% is generated when the food reaches both retailers and consumers.
Moreover, water used in food production resulting in food waste reaches more than 40 billion liters a figure equivalent to the water used by the country in 2.4 years. Thus, the total cost of water loss by food waste in Mexico is USD$ 7,972,007,957 per year.
Therefore, Cuauhtémoc Ochoa Fernández, Semarnat’s Undersecretary of Environmental Regulation and Promotion, announced a national strategy for waste control, focused “on reducing food waste.”
Source: El Universal
