Worldwide food waste
Did you know an estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted globally each year? That is one third of all food produced for human consumption, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. In the Netherlands one fourth of the food is wasted. Moreover, this wasted food is responsible for 8% of the emissions worldwide!
United Against Food Waste Foundation
Luckily there is not only bad news. A lot of hard work is going on to reduce the global food waste and by that means work towards a circular economy. The Dutch foundation “United against food waste” (Stichting Samen tegen voedselverspilling) is established to help reduce food waste. The foundation has the ambition to halve the food waste in the Netherlands by 2030. Because we are eager to help this initiative, and have the same goal in mind, we became a stakeholder of this foundation. In a joint effort, we can make the Netherlands a leader and a global role model in terms of realizing Sustainable Development Goal 12.3: “By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses”
Pillars for action
To achieve their goal of 1 million tonnes less food waste in 2030 the progress and impact is monitored. United Against Food Waste measures the effect of its individual and joint approach. Different stakeholders join forces to share their strengths, network and knowledge to develop innovative solutions. The foundation aims to achieve sustainable changes in consumers behaviour through campaigns, interventions and living labs. And finally, legislation and instruments needed to create a circular economy are stimulated. The foundation already initiated various ways to reduce food waste. For example, they ‘ve build up a marketplace where surpluses can be offered, if companies cannot find a customer mostly due to Covid-19 effects.
We already started with measuring our food waste in detail and will be making detailed analyses of these numbers. Next to that we have been working together with The Vegetable- and Fruitbrigade for Food Banks in The Netherlands to donate products we can no longer sell, which are being distributed among Food Bank clients nationally.
We are proud to be a stakeholder and we cannot wait to make some big changes towards a "Food Waste Free" chain. #verspillingsvrij
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