One in ten Irish adults are binning more food despite rising costs

We’re all feeling the pinch at the supermarket checkout. Grocery bills have crept up, the weekly shop feels like it costs more every few months and yet — and here’s the part that stings a little — new research shows that one in ten Irish adults are actually throwing away more food than they were last year. Not less. More.

The figures come from Too Good To Go, the food waste prevention app that is marking five years in Ireland this month. The research, carried out by Core Research on a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Irish adults, paints a fairly uncomfortable picture of how we’re collectively handling food in our homes right now.

Almost half of us aren’t worried about food waste — but maybe we should be

Perhaps the most striking finding is the shift in attitudes. The proportion of Irish adults who say they aren’t concerned about food waste in their homes has jumped by 9% in just one year — from 34% in 2025 to 43% in 2026. That means almost half of us are, at least on paper, not particularly bothered about it.

That’s a hard one to square with the fact that most of us will tell you in the same breath that we’re watching every euro at the till. Food waste costs Irish households an estimated €700 a year on average according to the EPA. That’s not an abstract figure. That’s a sizeable chunk of the weekly shop just disappearing into the bin.

Ireland generates around 708,000 tonnes of food waste every year and — here’s something most people don’t know — households are the single biggest contributor to that total, accounting for 31% of the national figure. More than restaurants. More than food services. More than any other sector. Two thirds of Irish adults (66%) had no idea that was the case before this research.

Alan Dillon TD and Adam Isaacs

Minister of State with special responsibility for the Circular Economy, Alan Dillon TD, acknowledged both the environmental and the financial side of the problem. “Food waste is a significant environmental and economic challenge, and preventing it requires action across the entire food system,” he said, adding that “initiatives that make it easier for food businesses, communities, and consumers to rescue surplus food and prevent it from becoming waste can help ensure that resources already invested in food production deliver the greatest possible benefit.”

Five years of fighting food waste in Ireland

Too Good To Go launched in Ireland five years ago with a fairly simple premise: food that was made to be eaten should actually be eaten. Since then the app has grown to more than one million users here and built a network of over 2,000 partner businesses. Earlier this year the company announced that more than two million Surprise Bags — boxes of surplus food sold at a reduced price by local cafés, bakeries, supermarkets and restaurants — had been saved from going to waste in Ireland alone, the equivalent of avoiding over 5.4 million kilograms of CO2e.

Globally the numbers are even bigger — 120 million registered users across 21 countries and more than 500 million meals saved from waste since 2016.

Adam Isaacs, Global Head of Public Affairs at Too Good To Go, was direct about what the new research means in practice. “Our latest research is a reminder that food waste is not an abstract environmental issue. It is something that happens in our homes and communities every day, and it has a direct impact on household budgets as well as the planet.”

“The fact that one in ten people say they are throwing away more food than they were last year shows there is still work to do. At the same time, the growth of our community in Ireland demonstrates that people want practical ways to make a difference.”

Small changes, real savings as we head into winter

With the cost of living still a very real pressure for most families heading into the colder months, reducing food waste is one of those rare things that is genuinely good for both your wallet and the planet at the same time. A few habits can make a surprising difference: planning meals before the weekly shop, checking the freezer before buying more, and actually using leftovers rather than letting them lurk at the back of the fridge until they’re no longer identifiable.

The Too Good To Go app itself is worth downloading if you haven’t already. You can pick up a Surprise Bag from a local café or shop — often containing bread, pastries, meals or groceries that would otherwise go unsold — for a fraction of the original price. It’s the kind of thing that feels like a bargain find and just happens to be doing some good at the same time. Which, on a busy Tuesday when you’ve forgotten to defrost anything for dinner, is not to be sniffed at.

The annual economic cost of food waste in Ireland is estimated at €1.29 billion. That figure belongs to all of us — but so does the ability to bring it down.