On average, 22 per cent of the amount of food purchased weekly by residents of Malta ends up in the solid waste stream, the National Statistics Office reported today.
Commemorated every year on 5 June, this year’s World Environment Day theme is “Think. Eat.Save.” The objective is to raise awareness to reduce food waste, save money, minimise the environmental impact of food production and enable food production processes to become more effcient. This news release focuses on sustainable food consumption in Malta.
The expenditure of different food items by residents of Malta over the past twelve years eperienced a continuous growth until 2004, followed by a sharp increase up to 2008. In 2009 and 2010 food expenditure experienced a decline due to the global financial crises.
Data reveals that meat and meat products constitute the largest expense in the local food basket (23 per cent). This is followed by bread and cereals (19 per cent) and milk and cheese (15 per cent). From the Household Budgetary Survey (HBS) it was estmated that residents consume 12.17 kilogrammes of food per capita on a weekly basis, or 1.73 kilogrammes daily. This consumption pattern costs, on average, €26 per week for every resident.
Data from two domestic waste composition surveys which were conducted by the NSO in 2002 and 2011 respectively confirm that the average food waste generation in Maltese households is 55.8 per cent. This translates into an average 0.38 kilogrammes per capita of solid waste per day.
Destruction of foodstuffs in Malta in the past two years, due either to expiry or as a result of inferior quality standards, was in 2011, 34.4 tonnes of food were destroyed, rising to 95.7 tonnes in 2012.