• According to the Osservatorio Waste Watcher International, Italians waste 617.9 grams of food per week.
• More food is thrown away in central and southern Italy — the same areas where food insecurity is highest.
• To halve food waste, weekly individual waste needs to be cut by 50 grams each year between now and 2029.

Food waste is on the rise in Italy: the good habits adopted during the Covid pandemic years have been forgotten, and today 88.2 grams of food are thrown away every day, or 617.9 grams per week. These are the findings of the report Il caso Italia 2025, presented by the Osservatorio Waste Watcher International on the occasion of the 12th National Day for the Prevention of Food Waste on 5 February.

Fruit has become the most wasted food item (24.3 grams per week), followed by bread, vegetables, salad, onions, garlic and root vegetables. Domestic food waste amounts to 8.242 billion euros (130.71 euros per capita per year) and accounts for 58.55 per cent of total food waste, from field to table, equal to 4,513 million tonnes at an overall cost of 14.101 billion euros.

Why food waste is connected to food poverty

More food is being wasted even as fewer and fewer people have access to healthy, sustainable food: the Fies food insecurity index for 2025 has risen by 13.95 per cent (it was +10.27 per cent in 2024), against a broader backdrop in which absolute poverty in Italy has increased from 7.7 per cent to 8.5 per cent (5.7 million people in 2023), and has risen by as much as 28.9 per cent among foreign households.

The paradox is that food insecurity goes hand in hand with waste: southern and central Italy are the areas where the greatest impoverishment is recorded and also where the most food is thrown away. This phenomenon is explained by Andrea Segrè, founder of the National Day for the Prevention of Food Waste and scientific director of the Osservatorio Waste Watcher International: those with less purchasing power buy lower-quality food, and these products are often closer to their expiry date or perish more easily because they are not fresh.

The strategy: cut food waste by 50 grams a year from 2025 to 2029

On the occasion of 5 February, a challenge is being launched to all Italians: to reach by 2030 a per capita waste of 369.7 grams per week — that is, half of the 737.4 grams recorded ten years ago at the time of the adoption of the Agenda 2030, which includes among its goals the halving of food waste — we must all reduce the amount of food we waste weekly by around 50 grams, doing so year on year from 2025 to 2029, cutting 50 grams from the previous year's figure each time.

Good habits and bad habits

86 per cent of Italians say they care about and pay a great deal of attention to food and its preparation, and many adopt anti-waste strategies: six in ten Italians eat first the foods they consider close to their expiry date or freeze food they will not be able to eat soon. 56 per cent taste food before throwing it away, even if it has already expired — if it is still good, they use it anyway — but only one in ten Italians donates excess cooked food to relatives or friends, and the proportion of Italians who ask at a restaurant for a bag to take home their leftovers remains unchanged: 28 per cent.

One in three Italians also admits to not thinking about the risk of waste and forgetting about it entirely. For 23 per cent, preventing waste requires too much time; according to 11 per cent, it is too costly or too much effort. One in ten Italians is discouraged by the thought that their personal contribution makes no difference or that it is too difficult. For five in every hundred Italians, waste is simply "not important".

Good intentions

To turn things around, one in two Italians is willing to eat first the food that risks going off, 45 per cent to freeze food that cannot be eaten soon, 40 per cent to use food that has just expired if it is still good, 37 per cent to carefully assess quantities before cooking, 32 per cent to make a shopping list and to always buy seasonal fruit and vegetables. Only 6 per cent intend to donate any extra cooked food to relatives or neighbours.