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According to the UN Environment Programme’s Food Waste Index, in 2024, the average Jamaican household threw out an estimated 88 kilogrammes (194 pounds) of food. Combined, that was over 243,000 tonnes of food waste for the year.
While these figures were broadly consistent with global averages, they represented increases of 22 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively, of the food wasted by individual households and the gross amount that reached garbage cans, when compared with 2022.
But this is not merely a matter of more garbage cans to empty and more waste reaching landfills. It means the people are literally wasting money by not consuming a significant portion of the food they purchase - in a context where Jamaica last year spent over US$1.46 billion to import food.
Looked at another way, the value of the island’s food imports in 2025 was 19 per cent of overall imports. Further, it would have required 88 per cent of what the island earned from merchandise exports to cover its food import bill.
