The increase in citizen awareness with greater use of food and water at home are the main conclusions of the results collected in the last wave of the Aqualia Sustainability Meter.
This idea is confirmed by data such as that 97.73% of the people who completed the survey say they usually buy local products and just over 95% say they save their leftover food for the next day.
In addition, 95.38% acknowledge removing food from the freezer in time so as not to defrost it with hot water, a percentage that has risen more than eight points since the last barometer in June 2024, which stood at 87%.
Another of the most assumed habits is to reduce food waste by planning the weekly or monthly menu in advance, which 93.75% of those surveyed do. In addition, 91.67% adjust the amount of water necessary for cooking food, thus optimizing its use.
On the other hand, in this new consultation the percentage of those who say they order tap water in restaurants instead of bottled water is reduced by 4 tenths compared to the previous wave, standing at 43.4%.
However, some habits still have some room for improvement. For example: only 35.09% affirm that they collect the water from the shower in a container until it comes out hot to use it later, a figure that drops compared to the previous consultation. And only 46.94% of people surveyed have ever used digital applications to purchase leftover food from restaurants at a lower price.
At least, yes, those who reuse the water from cooking vegetables to water plants remain at similar figures, 40%.
Not throwing away food matters
The importance of more or fewer people practicing good practices to avoid food waste is no less important. Because, when food is thrown away, all the resources used to produce it and deliver it to homes also go into the trash: water and energy mainly. In fact, today, globally, food waste is responsible for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In Spain, at least, according to the latest Food Waste Report in Spain from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the trends seem to be encouraging: in Spanish households in 2023, 13.2% less food was wasted than in 2020 and in the same year those who did not waste any food increased by 4.4% compared to the previous period.
But at a global level the figures are less positive. The data from the latest report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) revealed that in 2022 there was a total of 1,052 million tons of food lost. Of these, most correspond to household surpluses, 631 million tons, with an annual average of 79 kg/person.
More than 14,000 participants
The figures from this sixth wave, which express the results of the period between June 5 and December 5 of this year, reflect a greater adoption of sustainable habits to minimize food waste, which reduces the negative impact on the planet and also saves resources such as water and energy.
The Aqualia Sustainability Meter is the first measure of sustainable behaviors and habits for citizens. The tool, a simple 5-question test available on the sosteniblometro.com website, has collected responses from more than 14,400 participants since its launch in January 2022.
The I Barometer was launched in June 2022 and, since then, Aqualia has periodically published the results of this study to inform and encourage citizens to continue measuring how sustainable their daily habits are. Also, remember that, once the test is completed, the user obtains both their results and complementary information about what gestures they can correct and how to do it through sustainable advice to implement in daily habits.
Sustainability territory by territory
Jaén, Córdoba, Tenerife, Guipúzcoa and Toledo are, in this wave, the “most sustainable provinces” as they are the ones that, due to their participation and type of responses, have proven to have more sustainable behaviors.
The measurement data for greater or lesser sustainability is the index obtained from the relationship between the scores (sostenipoints) and the number of participants from each province.