The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has reported global food waste has cost the economy $750 billion a year, accroding to Reuters.

The Report revealed global food waste is resulting in 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions and annual economic losses resulting in billion a year. Every year about a third of all food for human consumption is wasted, along with all the energy, water and chemicals needed to produce it and dispose of it.

According to Reuters, the report calculated that globally a level of water three times greater than the annual flow of Russia's Volga river is required each year to produce food that is ultimately wasted. 

In the report, "The Food Wastage Footprint", the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that the carbon footprint of wasted food was equivalent to 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year.

"We all are farmers and fishers; food processors and supermarkets; local and national governments; individual consumers, must make changes at every link of the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first place, and re-use or recycle it when we can't," FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said in a statement. "In addition to the environmental imperative, there is a moral one: we simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste, when 870 million people go hungry every day."

According to the United Nations, food wastage reduction would decrease the need to raise food production by 60 percent in order to meet the 2050 population demand.  Also improving communication between producers and consumers to manage the supply chain more efficiently. The report suggested investing more in harvesting, cooling and packaging methods.

Consumers should be encouraged to serve smaller portions and make more use of leftovers. Businesses should give food to charities, and develop alternatives to dumping organic waste in landfill.