Half of Bulgarian households threw away food in the past month, and a quarter do so at least once a week. The figures come from the first nationwide survey of food waste in Bulgaria, carried out by the Bulgarian Food Bank and the polling firm Ipsos Bulgaria.

Last Friday, World Food Day, Bulgarian Food Bank executive director Tsanka Milanova said 617,000 tonnes of food were thrown away in Bulgaria in 2023.

See also: Bulgarians threw away 96 kg of food each, 617,000 tonnes in total, in 2023

Homes produce the biggest share of waste, nearly 45% of all food waste. That is more than food production, processing, restaurants and cafés, or retail. Hristina Nikolova puts the figure for households at 43%.

The most common reason is that the food went off, which is true in half of cases. In a third, people cooked too much, and in another third they did not eat the food in time. In a quarter, they forgot about it.

Nikolova names several bad habits: falling for special offers, buying more than needed, and buying items that are not on a shopping list made in advance.

According to Eurostat, a Bulgarian throws away 96 kg of food a year, 30 kg less than the average European.

The issue comes amid weeks of debate about costly food and high retail mark-ups. Speaking to Bulgarian National Radio, Milanova described a paradox: "expensive food and shrinking wallets on one side, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of discarded food on the other".

She said the issue has another side: the geopolitical situation, supply problems and new EU targets to cut food waste. Cutting waste is a shared responsibility to the environment and to future resources, not just a personal choice, she said.

The Bulgarian Food Bank and one of Bulgaria's big retail chains want to draw attention to the problem. Experts give advice on what to do with food that will not be used before it goes off, and on how to read labels so that food that is still good is not thrown away.

Last year the Bulgarian Food Bank saved nearly 500 tonnes of food from being thrown away. It reached 90,000 people in need.