Food waste in the EU: 129 kg per person – a plain-language guide to Eurostat’s new figures

Food waste in the EU did not fall in any meaningful way in 2024. According to data Eurostat released on 29 September 2026 – the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste – around 129 kilograms of food was thrown away for every person living in the Union. That is roughly 350 grams per person, every single day. Here is what the numbers mean, where most of the waste arises, how Hungary compares, and what we can do about it ourselves.

In short: Food waste in the EU totalled 57.9 million tonnes in 2024, or about 129 kilograms per person. More than half of it (53%) comes from households, and the per-person figure has barely moved since 2020.

Food waste in the EU: the 2024 numbers

According to Eurostat’s latest news release, the European Union generated 57.9 million tonnes of food waste in 2024. That is 0.7% more than in 2023, when 57.5 million tonnes were recorded. It is worth knowing that the figure covers both edible and inedible parts – so alongside leftover stew and mouldy bread, it also includes bones, fruit peel and coffee grounds.

Here is how the waste is split across the economy:

• households: 53%, 69 kg per person
• manufacture of food and beverages: 19%, 25 kg per person
• restaurants and food services: 12%, 15 kg per person
• primary production (farming, fishing): 8%, 10 kg per person
• retail and other distribution: 8%, 10 kg per person

Households take the lead

The most telling number is 69 kilograms: that is how much food the average EU citizen throws away at home each year – about 1.3 kg a week, or roughly 190 grams a day. Add restaurants and canteens, and two thirds of all food waste (65%) turns out to arise where food is eaten, with only one third generated earlier in the supply chain. The 15 kilograms per person from food services is no small item either – we looked at practical ways to cut it in four hotel waste reduction pilots any hotel could copy.

There is a simple explanation. For the food industry and agriculture, waste is lost money, so these sectors have more developed strategies to reduce it – for instance, trimmings and rejected parts are used as by-products. In our kitchens, by contrast, discarded food is an “invisible” cost: it disappears bit by bit, one yoghurt or half a lettuce at a time.

Eurostat’s detailed methodological overview offers another striking estimate: food waste in retail, food services and households may correspond to around 9% of the food supplied to consumers. Put bluntly, roughly one in every eleven kilograms we buy ends up in the bin.

Why isn’t the figure going down?

The bad news is not that things are getting worse, but that they are not getting better. Eurostat’s analysis shows that in countries that reported every year, the per-person average barely changed from 2020 to 2023: 128, 129, 129 and then 130 kilograms. The 2024 figure of 129 kilograms falls into the same band.

It also helps to know that the data can change after publication. The EU total for 2023 published last year was above 58 million tonnes; the new release puts it at 57.5 million tonnes, because member states keep refining their measurements and revising earlier data. Small year-on-year changes of a few tenths of a percent should therefore be read with caution – what matters is the trend, and it has been flat for five years.

Binding EU targets for 2030

This stagnation is especially awkward because the EU has since adopted binding reduction targets. Under Directive (EU) 2025/1892, which amends the Waste Framework Directive, by the end of 2030 food waste must be cut:

• by 10% in food processing and manufacturing, and
• by 30% per person, jointly, in retail, food services and households,

compared with the 2021–2023 annual average.

A quick, rounded calculation of our own illustrates the scale: in 2024, the three consumer-facing sectors together accounted for 94 kilograms per person (69 + 15 + 10). A 30% cut means bringing that down to roughly 66 kilograms by 2030 – in other words, every EU resident would need to throw away about 28 kilograms less food each year. The official baseline is the 2021–2023 average, but since values barely differed in those years, the proportions show the size of the task well. A change of that magnitude in five years will take a real shift in habits.

Where does Hungary stand?

Eurostat’s news release does not highlight individual countries; the national breakdown is available in the env_wasfw database. For households, however, Hungary has a detailed domestic source: Nébih’s Maradék nélkül (Without Leftovers) programme has measured Hungarian families’ food waste with diary-based surveys for years – we covered the latest results in detail.

According to the 2025 survey, each Hungarian generates an average of 60.7 kilograms of food waste at home per year. Of this, 34.3% – 20.8 kilograms per person – could have been avoided. That is genuine waste, amounting to around 197,000 tonnes a year nationally. The trend is encouraging: in 2016 the per-person figure was still around 68 kilograms.

One important caveat: Nébih’s and Eurostat’s methods differ, so 60.7 and 69 kilograms are not directly comparable. What can be said is that Hungarian households are not among the most wasteful, and the domestic figure has been falling for years – while the avoidable third still leaves plenty of room for improvement.

What to keep in mind when reading the data

A few methodological points without which the numbers are easy to misread:

• Waste is not the same as wastage. Eurostat counts all discarded food, including inedible parts. Only the edible share is true wastage.
• Unharvested crops are excluded. Produce left in the field or banned from sale for safety reasons counts as food loss, not food waste.
• Measured in fresh mass. Waste is converted back to its “fresh” weight before moisture evaporates, so summer and winter data stay comparable.
• Several measurement methods are allowed. Member states may use direct measurement, waste composition analysis, mass balance, questionnaires or household diaries, which can cause differences.
• Missing data. Bulgaria, Germany and Romania did not submit 2024 data; Eurostat used their latest available figures instead. (We recently wrote in detail about food waste in Romania.)
• Small exporting countries can skew results. In countries with fewer than 10 million inhabitants that export a lot of food, manufacturing waste per person can look high, because waste from products eaten elsewhere is recorded there.

What we can do at home

Since more than half of all waste comes from households, our own kitchens offer the most room for action. A few proven steps:

• Check the fridge before shopping and write a list – “just in case” purchases are a major source of waste.
• Know your date labels. Food should not be eaten after its “use by” date, but many products are still perfectly fine after their “best before” date – just look and smell.
• Organise the fridge: older items to the front, newer ones to the back.
• Freeze and cook with leftovers. Leftover sides, bread or overripe fruit make great ingredients.
• Plan portions, and don’t be shy about taking leftovers home from a restaurant.
• Don’t let inedible parts go to waste either: peels, coffee grounds and bones belong in the compost or – where available – the biowaste bin, so at least they are recovered. Some cities already handle this at system level: under the Honolulu organic waste program, food scraps now go in the green cart.

If you want to do more, this year’s European Week for Waste Reduction is a good opportunity – actions can be registered in Hungary until 9 November.

Sources:

• Eurostat: Food waste in the EU: 129 kg per person in 2024 (29 September 2026)
• Eurostat Statistics Explained: Food waste and food waste prevention – estimates
• Eurostat database: env_wasfw
• Directive (EU) 2025/1892 on waste
• Nébih Maradék nélkül: Household food waste survey 2025 – research summary (in Hungarian)