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Spain still throws away over a million tonnes of food a year and most of it starts at home
New figures mark World Day Against Food Waste, with household bins the biggest culprit by far
Spain wasted 1,129.91 million kilos of food in 2025, working out at 24.3 kilos for every person in the country. That's according to the Ministry of Agriculture's latest Food Waste Report, and while the overall figure represents a 19.2% drop since 2020, the pace of improvement is slowing. Waste actually rose 0.4% compared with 2024, with the per capita figure barely moving at all.Households are overwhelmingly the problem. A striking 97.5% of all food waste in Spain, some 1,101.8 million kilos, comes straight from family fridges and pantries rather than restaurants or shops. María Cruz Díaz, president of the Institute of Engineering of Spain, puts the early progress down to growing awareness, better shopping habits and rising prices pushing people to buy more carefully. The tougher challenge now, she says, lies in habits that are harder to shift, like reading food labels properly, storing things correctly or simply buying only what's needed.
Marie Lindström, general manager of Too Good To Go in Spain, breaks the problem down into three moments: shopping, storage and cooking. Her company found that 26% of shoppers admit to buying without any real plan, and 21% do so "just in case." Fruit, vegetables and leafy greens alone make up 46% of what gets thrown away, largely because they spoil quickly and are often bought in bigger quantities than needed.
Out on the street, people seem well aware of the problem. Rosi told one publication she "likes to use everything" and keeps leftovers in the freezer to rotate through. Yanet, spotted with a bag of tangerines, said fruit and veg "spoil quickly, and so much gets thrown away here. It's a shame!" Pablo and María, a young couple, were equally firm that "nothing goes to waste in our house."
Restaurants fare rather better, producing just 2.5% of total waste, helped along by the new Food Waste Law in force since March 2025. Díaz calls it a solid step forward but stresses that "applying regulations to a house seems almost impossible." What actually helps at home, she argues, is awareness rather than rules.
The law does bring one welcome change for diners though. Anyone can now ask to take home their leftovers from a restaurant in a proper container at no extra cost, something many people already do without a second thought. As Yanet put it, "if there's a lot left over, yes, I'm not ashamed. We're paying and it can be reused."
There's an economic side too. Too Good To Go estimates Spain loses around 36 kilos of food every second, worth roughly €152 a second, alongside more than 2.5 billion litres of water used to produce food that's never eaten. With new EU targets on the horizon requiring further cuts by 2030, the message from experts is consistent. The law can shape what supermarkets and restaurants do, but what happens in the kitchen at home is still down to each of us.
Image: Denise Nys/Pexels
