How much food does a French household throw away in a year?

Most pages about food waste in France still quote a study from 2016. On 29 September 2026, the national statistics service SDES published figures for 2024. Here is what they say, turned into something you can picture at home, and what they don't let anyone say.

How much food does a French household throw away each year?

SDES counts 1.3 million tonnes of edible food thrown away in French homes in 2024, or 19 kg per person ^[1]. "Edible" means food that could have been eaten: not peels, bones or coffee grounds.

The average French household has 2.14 people ^[2]. Multiply the two and an average household throws away about 41 kg of edible food a year. Spread over 52 weeks, that is 0.8 kg a week. Less than a kilo, which is exactly why it is so easy to miss.

Figure	Value	Source	Year
Edible food thrown away at home, France	1.3 Mt · 19 kg per person	SDES	2024
… of which meal leftovers	0.8 Mt · ≈ 12 kg per person	SDES	2024
… of which food still in its packaging	0.5 Mt · ≈ 7 kg per person	SDES	2024
All food waste at home, incl. peels and bones	4.3 Mt · 62 kg per person	SDES	2024
Average household size	2.14 people	INSEE	2023
Edible food per household (our calculation)	≈ 41 kg a year · ≈ 0.8 kg a week	Savera	2026

What exactly gets thrown away?

Two things. Most of it, 0.8 million tonnes, is meal leftovers: the half-portion of pasta, the end of the soup. The rest, 0.5 million tonnes, is food thrown away still in its packaging. That is about 12% of all household food waste ^[1].

The second group is the one we care about most. Food that was never opened wasn't badly cooked or badly stored. It was bought and forgotten, or bought twice. That is a planning problem, and in a shared home a coordination problem: who bought what, and who knows it is there. This is our reading of the numbers, not something SDES measured.

Some of it never reaches the bin: 14.6% of household food waste goes into home compost, and about 0.2 million tonnes of that could have been eaten ^[1].

Is the home really the biggest source of food waste?

For edible food, yes. Across the whole French food chain, SDES counts 56 kg of edible food lost per person in 2024. Homes account for 19 kg of it, more than farms (15 kg), food processing (10 kg), restaurants and canteens (8 kg) or shops (4 kg) ^[1].

It is also the only stage a household controls directly.

How does France compare with the rest of Europe?

It depends on what you count. Eurostat measures all household food waste, edible and inedible together. On that basis France reported 62 kg per person in 2024 (an estimate), below the EU average of 69 kg. Across the whole chain France is above average: 145 kg per person against 129 kg ^[3].

We go country by country in How much food do households throw away in each EU country?, and explain why the figures never match in Why do food-waste numbers never match?

Do bigger households waste more?

In total, yes. Per person, no. In the UK, WRAP found that people living alone throw away the most food per person, mostly food that goes off before anyone eats it ^[4]. So multiplying 19 kg by the number of people gives an upper estimate, not an exact figure.

Why have I seen "30 kg" or "145 kg" elsewhere?

"29 kg per person" comes from an ADEME study published in 2016 ^[5]. It was the best figure of its time; it is not today's. "145 kg" is real, but it covers all food waste along the whole chain, peels and bones included.

One more caution. SDES says its 2024 figures cannot be compared with earlier years, because the method changed ^[1]. So nobody can honestly tell from these numbers whether food waste in French homes is going up or down.

How we calculated

• Per household: 19 kg × 2.14 people = 40.7 kg a year; 40.7 ÷ 52 = 0.78 kg a week.
• Per person for leftovers and packaged food: tonnes ÷ about 69 million people, the population implied by SDES's own figures (1.3 Mt = 19 kg).
• We round to whole kilograms and write "about".