Economy and Sustainable Development Minister, Tomislav Coric, on Tuesday cited a survey showing that Croatians waste as much as 286,000 tonnes of food annually, or 71 kilograms per capita.

He noted, however, that there was a lot of space to act in order to reduce the amount of food waste.

The amount of food thrown away annually is relatively large – maybe not when compared to other European countries but it is large for our country and for our per capita GDP, Coric said at a news conference at which he presented the survey, the first such statistical analysis made by the Institute for Environment and Nature Protection.

“The maneuvering space for reducing food waste exists and the Economy and Sustainable Development Ministry, together with the Agriculture Ministry, will be working on education in the period to come, which we believe will help reduce food waste. This is also an environmental issue… given that food waste impacts significantly CO2 emissions in Croatia,” Coric said.

360,000 loaves of bread can be bought for price of edible but wasted food

The head of the Institute for Environment and Nature Protection, Aljosa Duplic, said that of the 286,000 tonnes of food waste generated annually, both by the household and the business sector, as much as 216,000 tonnes were generated by households.

The amount of food waste generated by households alone is 53.7 kg per household member, Duplic said.

In the continental part of Croatia, the amount of household food waste per capita is 52 kg, in Dalmatia it is 57 kg, and in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County and Istria it is 61 kg. This shows that in the coastal region citizens more rarely consume again a previously prepared meal and much more frequently throw away a food item when they see that its expiration date is close, which is not the case in the continental part of the country, said Duplic.

He noted that in both the household and the business sector, the amount of food thrown away that could have been consumed stands at slightly more than 105,000 tonnes annually.

If households actually consumed that food, it would help reduce the amount of unsorted waste by four percent annually, he said, noting that the survey also showed that pensioners and people with university education tend to waste food somewhat less.

The value of food thrown away annually equals the value of 360,000 800-gram loaves of bread which could be distributed on a daily basis to each resident of Split, Osijek and Slavonski Brod, he said.