Europe and some of its cities has been one of the pioneers in combating food waste. Earlier this year, European Union (EU) Member States approved new EU waste rules which mandates bio-waste separate collection or recycle at source by 2023. In this article, we’d like to share with you a couple of top reads and resources on food waste specific to EU and its cities.

1) EU Food Waste

EU food waste is a good place to start to learn about food waste management in the EU. It is an online platform that provides information on EU actions to tackle food waste, and serves as a repository of good practices in food waste prevention. It also provides communications materials to help raise awareness, as well as a food waste resources library.

2) FUSIONS

Food Use for Social Innovation by Optimising Waste Prevention Strategies, or FUSIONS, is a project about working towards a more resource-efficient Europe by significantly reducing food waste through social innovation. Its 2016 publication Estimates of European food waste levels presents food waste quantity estimates in the 28 Member States in the EU (EU-28). This uses data from robust and comparable methodologies. The report is the first attempt to produce an EU-28 food waste data set which adjusts and upscales existing data.

The report recommends increasing the number of EU Member States that measure food waste robustly to fill the data gaps that prevents accurate quantification of food waste. This is essential with the new recycling targets and mandates set by the EU which requires quantitative monitoring. The project also published Food waste quantification manual to support the Member States in developing coherent methods for acquiring domestic food waste data across sectors of the food chain.

You can also learn more great initiatives and best practices in food waste recycling and circular economy in private and public sectors in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Parma, Italy, Denmark, Malmö, Sweden, and so on. Check out our Blog page to find out more.

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