The volume of edible food that is wasted is staggering. In 2017, the UN estimated that almost a third of all food that is produced is discarded. Edible food makes up approximately 1.3 gigatonnes of this (one gigatonne is a billion tonnes). For comparison, one tonne of wasted food is about the equivalent of 127 large plastic bin bags. This not only represents a phenomenal loss in terms of food that could feed people, but also a loss in resources such as water, labour power, soil nutrients, transportation energy and so forth.