Household food waste calculator
Wasted food is an estimate, not a till receipt. A UK household of four’s edible waste was about £1,000 in 2022 (WRAP). A US consumer, groceries and restaurants, lost about $728 in 2023 prices (EPA, April 2025). This tool uses those official averages as labelled defaults, or your spend × a disclosed rate, and always shows a range. It does not claim Dietrack users save that money.
Your estimate
Every headline number is an estimate with a named source, year, and geography. Change the inputs and this block updates.
EPA 2025 · US · FAH + FAFH
Estimated dollars / year
$2,913 (mid estimate)
Range $2,039 – $3,787
Estimated / month
$243 (mid estimate)
Range $170 – $316
EPA’s consumer-level figure for a household of four is $2,913 (2023 prices), then the average pattern band. Includes groceries and restaurants. Restaurant waste is priced at grocery prices, so the dollar total is likely an underestimate. This is not the 2010-price “$1,500 family of four” line.
EPA 2025 · US consumer · edible lb
Kilograms
465 kg (mid estimate)
Range 325 kg – 604 kg
Pounds
1,025 lb (mid estimate)
Range 718 lb – 1,333 lb
Household size × 256.2 lb/person edible consumer-level waste (EPA 2025 / LAFA), including groceries and food service. A household of four is 1025 lb before the pattern band. Rice is omitted in LAFA, so weight is slightly understated.
A weekly slice of the money estimate above is about $39 – $73, mid $56. If even one substantial leftover (a roast, a pan of pasta) is binned most weeks, that sits inside this weekly slice. It is an illustration, not a scientific leftover value and not a price for any particular meal.
After the number
The estimate is the cost of food that was already in the kitchen. The useful move is to cook that first, not to feel bad about last month’s spinach.
01
See what is actually there before you shop. Dietrack’s fridge inventory is built for that job. A notebook also works.
02
Start from ingredients, not from a blank meal-plan grid. The meal planner from ingredients you already have is the Dietrack version of that loop.
03
The third cumin is how averages happen. A smart grocery list that reads your kitchen subtracts stock before you add milk. Tactics without an app: how to save money on groceries.
Snap your fridge or pantry. Cook what you already paid for.
Free on iOS and Android. Dietrack is not the best tool if you need a weighed seven-day diary with lab-grade kilograms, a kitchen scale and a notes app beat us there. It is the right next step if you want dinner from the food you already bought.
Scopes
Same search query. Different fractions. Mixing them into one “household waste” figure is how competing calculators go wrong.
WRAP’s 11% is edible waste as a share of food brought into the home in the UK in 2022. EPA’s 11% is waste dollars as a share of all US food spending in 2023, food at home and away from home, and EPA says that percentage is likely an underestimate because restaurant waste is priced at grocery prices. Same digit. Different pie.
Weight disagrees too. WRAP’s 88 kg/person is UK household food and drink, edible plus inedible, all discard routes. UNEP’s 81 kg/person is a high-income household-stage average, not a UK WRAP clone and not money. EPA’s 256.2 lb/person is edible consumer-level waste including restaurants.
| Figure | What it measures | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| FAO ~1/3 of food produced (2011) | Share of production, globally | Not a typical grocery basket |
| USDA ERS ~31% of 430 billion lb (2010) | Retail + consumer food supply, US | Not 31% of your till receipt |
| WRAP ~88 kg/person, ~210 kg/household (2022) | UK household food and drink, edible + inedible | Not 1,000 kg per household; not UNEP’s 81 kg |
| WRAP edible = 11% of food brought home | UK in-home edible / purchases into the home | Not EPA’s 11% of all food spending |
| UNEP 81 kg/capita (2024, 2022 data) | High-income household stage | Not a pound or dollar figure |
| EPA $728/person (2025 report, 2023 prices) | US edible consumer cost, groceries + restaurants | Not 2010’s ~$1,500 family of four; not grocery-only |
Mix
A produce-heavy bin can look large on the scale and small on the receipt. Meat does the opposite.
EPA’s 2025 consumer-cost tables make the split obvious: meat is the highest dollar category per person (about $133.48), while added sugars lead pounds (about 37.0 lb). Other dairy is second in dollars ($74.32); fluid milk is a separate EPA category, not rolled into that dairy figure. That is a national mix, not a picture of your fridge, which is why this page does not offer category sliders pretending to be your kitchen.
WRAP’s UK money figures are edible purchase cost only. They do not include cooking energy, travel, or what the council spends to treat the waste. A compost caddy changes the methane story. It does not un-spend the shop.
| US consumer mix (EPA 2025) | Dominates | Per person / year |
|---|---|---|
| Meat | Dollars | $133.48 |
| Other dairy | Dollars (2nd) | $74.32 |
| Added sugars | Pounds | 37.0 lb |
Figures from EPA Table 2 / Figure 1 in Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to American Consumers (April 2025). Citation, not sliders.
UK diaries
WRAP’s 2022/23 diaries, edible weight. Self-reported reasons, useful for where to look, not a diagnosis of your week.
Not used in time
~39%
Looked or smelled off (~22%) plus past the date (~17%).
Cooked, prepared, or served too much
~25%
The leftover that never becomes tomorrow’s lunch.
Preference / perceived inedible
~22%
Someone in the house will not eat it.
Method
The widget and this HTML use the same formulas. If JavaScript fails, the worked examples below still stand.
Rarely / about average / often set the highlighted mid at 0.5× / 1.0× / 1.5× of an official figure. The displayed range uses a wider planning band (0.4–0.7 / 0.7–1.3 / 1.2–2.0) so you never get a single fake-precise pound. They are planning scenarios, not WRAP’s published envelope alone, and not measured Dietrack kitchens.
Kilograms: size × 81 kg (high-income household stage). Money only from your spend × the same grocery scenario bands as the US spend path. No invented national currency default. Dietrack is a Dutch company; that is not a reason to output euros for a Kenyan shop.
Weekly kilograms or weekly money, annualised (× 52), with a ±20% week-to-week spread labelled as an assumption. We do not convert £ into kg with a hidden price-per-kilo.
Off unless you tick the widget. Kilograms × 2.5–3.6 kg CO₂e/kg. The lower anchor is FAO 2013’s global edible-wastage mix (~2.5 kg CO₂e/kg). The upper bound, and the UK mid , is WRAP’s implied intensity (3.6 kg CO₂e/kg edible from 16 Mt / 4.4 Mt). There is no unsourced 4.5 factor. EPA did not publish a household CO₂e factor. A high-meat bin sits higher; salad sits lower. This probably isn’t worth treating as a personal carbon audit.
Mid and range × 0.75 or 0.50. WRAP’s 73% edible share is food that could have been eaten; WRAP does not treat that as identical to “avoidable”, potato skins sit in edible/preference. Individual 25% or 50% cuts are not a trial result on this page.
This is a WRAP worked example, not the widget default. Switch the region control to United Kingdom to match these rows.
| Output | Low | Mid | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edible £ / year (WRAP) | £700 | £1,000 | £1,300 |
| Total kg / year (WRAP, edible + inedible) | 246 kg | 352 kg | 458 kg |
| Edible kg / year (73% of total) | 180 kg | 257 kg | 334 kg |
This is the widget’s default if JavaScript never runs. Source pills on the widget match these rows. EPA dollars include restaurants.
| Output | Low | Mid | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer $ / year (EPA, includes restaurants) | $2,039 | $2,913 | $3,787 |
| Edible lb / year (EPA consumer-level) | 718 lb | 1,025 lb | 1,333 lb |
Honesty
Sources
Retrieved 18 August 2026. Competing blogs are not sources.
Further reading
How much food the average household wastes
Kilograms, WRAP vs UNEP, seven kitchen habits.
What household food waste costs
The money explainer, four waste types, and a 30-day test, not a second calculator.
The product hub: expiry-first inventory, cook-from-stock, gap-only list.
Get the app
Free on iOS and Android. No promised pounds.
