The European Consumer Food Waste Forum project
The European Commission (Joint Research Centre and Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety) set up the European Consumer Food Waste Forum (2021-2024) which brought together researchers and practitioners to address consumer food waste. The aim of the project was to gather data, identify practical solutions and develop tools to reduce food waste at the consumer level, including households and food services. The project objectives included:
- Reviewing evidence on drivers of consumer food waste and levers for behavioural change;
- Conducting research and data collection on interventions to prevent and reduce consumer food waste, in particular in EU Member States;
- Evaluating the identified interventions based on their feasibility, reach and effectiveness;
- Defining research protocols and recommendations for effective interventions and further research, to be tailored and implemented at national and regional levels;
- Developing a compendium of multi-dimensional, multi-level, evidence-based tools that can be applied by national, regional and local a uthorities.
The Compendium has been digitalised into a Toolkit to reduce consumer food waste. This comprehensive set of tools includes:
- A summary video explaining how to use the tools;
- Three video tutorials with practical guidance for designing, implementing, and evaluating food waste reduction actions (with subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Romanian);
- The food waste prevention calculator, a digital tool to calculate the environmental, economic, and nutritional impacts of food waste reduction actions, based on life cycle thinking. It also provides ready to use messages on impacts to support communication activities;
- The food waste action planner, an interactive tool that helps users choose between more than 70 food waste prevention actions based on their types and target audiences;
- Leaflets with recommendations in food waste prevention for policymakers, food businesses and other organisations as well as schools (available in 24 EU languages);
- Scientific reports and communication materials developed by the European Consumer Food Waste Forum.
European citizens’ panel on food waste
How to drive further action and accelerate food waste reduction in the EU was the topic of the first of the new generation of citizens’ panel in the follow-up of the Conference on the future of Europe to actively contribute to the EU policy-making process.
The European citizens gathered in the panel have concluded their work after three3 weekends of deliberations, between December 2022 and February 2023. 23 recommendations were presented to the European Commission around three lines of action aiming to: strengthen the cooperation in the food value chain, encourage food business initiatives and support the change of consumer behaviour.