Wasting Food, Wasting Resources

Environmental savings by reducing food waste

  • News 30.11.2017

Food waste got in the focus of environmental policy. The Resource Efficiency Roadmap of European Commission set the aspirational goal of reducing the resource inputs in the food chain by 20 per cent and halving the disposal of edible food waste by 2020. Focusing on consumer food waste, the authors of the article "Wasting Food, Wasting Resources" tested what halving of food waste would imply for greenhouse gas emissions, land use, blue water consumption, and material use.

Depending on the environmental category, this would lead to 2 to 7 per cent reductions of the total environmental footprint compared to the 2011 levels. This equals a 10 to 11 per cent decrease in inputs in the food value chain. This would be equivalent to around half of the resource use reductions targeted. The EU households have the largest potential, rather than the food-related services. "Halving food waste by 2020 is unlikely. It remains to be seen, whether the same target of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will finally receive the necessary attention," said Prof. Dr. Philipp Schepelmann, Project Co-ordinator, Research Group Energy, Transport and Climate Policy (Wuppertal Institute). The European Commission has set high standards, but the Member States need to rise up to the challenge of decreasing the per capita food waste generation by 50 per cent by 2030.

The full article "Wasting Food, Wasting Resources" by Arkaitz Usubiaga and Isabel Butnar of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources in London and Prof. Dr. Philipp Schepelmann can be downloaded at the following link.


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