The simple concept that food costs money, food gets thrown. Therefore money is thrown away. It encapsulates the cost of food waste in economic terms perfectly. It is estimated by the FAO that 1/3 of global food production gets lost through waste. That is a staggering figure of 1.3 billion tonnes of food wasted annually.  A global cost of $400 billion is lost annually when translated into financial terms. Furthermore, with 40% of all food reported to be wasted in the United States (National Resource Defense Council, NRDC), $165 billion of food is wasted when put into figures.

Food distributors such as restaurants or supermarkets add to the economic cost of food wastage. The calculation of economic cost for better informed decision making for curtailment of food wastage is imperative in this day and age. In Britain, a renowned supermarket chain Tesco reported 46,684 tonnes of total food waste in their 2016/17 financial report. That is a total of 0.47% of their total sales volume, that makes up about half of their total sales volume across the country. This seems to suggest that supermarkets perceive it to be more profitable to let food rot than to take steps in mitigating the waste.

While it seems unclear of the true economic cost of food wastage in Singapore, money could be better spent with less money spent on the handling of wasted food. With scarce land in Singapore, a lot of money is spent to create artificial lands or building of landfills to house the food waste and the building of incinerators as well. These are both costly and are contributors to air pollution as a result of the burning of food waste.