Of the ten thousand people surveyed, almost half argued it was harder to control waste because the heat breaks down food easier, with over a quarter of those asked saying they eat less in the heat, therefore more goes to waste.

A lesser percentage stated that people eat out more in Summer, leading to food at home wasting away.

In a press statement about the study, the company reminded of the food wastage statistic in Portugal being 1.89 million tons per year, and that the planet is in an ecological deficit since the 2nd of August (the point where we started consuming resources that we should only be using up next year).

To save food from going to waste, Too Good To Go (founded in Denmark in 2016 after a group of friends saw all the unused food dumped out the back of a restaurant) connects consumers with restaurants, supermarkets, grocery stores and hotels through their app, allowing users to buy food that wouldn’t have been used otherwise at low prices. Nowadays, it’s present in 17 countries and reaches 80 million users and 134 thousand partner brands.

The study warns that 28% of the Portuguese waste more food in Summer, and that worldwide food waste is responsible for 10% of carbon emissions.

Beyond the natural resource and economic waste, the document states, dumping food out also has the negative environmental impact of generating various greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which are released as the food decomposes.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN says that about a third of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted in some phase of the food industry supply chain, between production and consumption, while in the meantime over 800 million people are starving.

Data published last year indicated that each Portuguese citizen wastes about 183kg of food a year, 10 kilos above the EU average.

In the meantime, according to the study, seven in every ten people inquired confessed to trying their best to not waste food, 61% of those asked say they are left bothered and anguished when food is wasted, and 66% revealed themselves to be conscious of the food they waste at home. Over half say they ask for a bag of leftover food to take home when they eat out.

Since its inception, Too Good To Go has saved over 220 million tons of food from being wasted. In Portugal alone over 2.9 million boxes have been salvaged, avoiding a waste of over 2900 tons of food.