Food waste - Foodrise EU

What's the problem?

Billions of tonnes of good food are wasted worldwide each year — fuelling climate chaos, wasting the work of farmers, squandering energy, land and nature. At the same time, at least 33 million Europeans cannot afford a quality meal every second day.

The waste of a flawed corporate food system

Food waste isn’t inevitable — it’s a result of business decisions, especially by powerful players like supermarkets, who prioritise profit above all else.

Supermarkets reject perfectly good food for being “wonky” or cancel orders at the last minute, leaving farmers with produce they can’t sell in time.

Packaging fruit and veg in plastic bags forces shoppers to buy more than they need, while confusing date labels lead to unnecessary waste at home. In 2022, the EU wasted 144 million tonnes of food a year, including food that is wasted at farm level. That’s equivalent to about three quarters of the food the EU imports!

Voluntary action isn’t enough

Businesses are failing to act quickly enough to meet the 2030 target to halve food waste in line with Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 — or even report how much they waste. That’s why we need governments to step in, break the deadlock, and drive real change.

40%

of the world's food

is thrown away each year

8-10%

of global greenhouse gas emissions

is produced by food waste

28%

of the world's agricultural land area

is wasted growing food that never gets eaten. That's more land than China

Our solutions

Governments must make it mandatory for businesses to report food waste

We’re demanding that businesses – especially the big players – are legally required to measure and report their food waste. Without knowing how much food is wasted, where and why, we won’t be able to take effective action to tackle this huge problem.

Read here our policy brief on the feasibility of ambitious legally binding EU food waste reduction targets

EU countries must introduce ambitious policies to tackle food waste from farm to fork

We need governments to step up and take stronger action on food waste from farm to fork through ambitious policies.

In our report, Actions To End Food Waste, we outline seven critical policy measures to do this, including legally binding targets to reduce waste, laws to protect farmers from unfair trading practices, relaxing cosmetic standards that reject perfectly good food, and packaging reforms to help reduce food waste at home.

Read the Actions to End Food Waste report

United we go!

Pushing governments and companies to accelerate their efforts in the fight against food waste is only possible through our collaboration with diverse and inspiring partners in civil society, academia, and businesses. Together, we share our knowledge and best-practises, develop joint strategies, and boost the momentum for food waste action!

Our demands

Introduce mandatory food waste measurement and public reporting for larger businesses
Introduce legally binding targets at national level to reduce food waste from farm to fork.
Such as requirements on supermarkets to sell fresh (uncut) produce loose, and regulating unfair trading practices that lead to food waste in supply chains.
Enact the right to food to ensure that no one needs to rely on food banks, on which businesses all too often dump their unsold food surplus.

Our impact

Following our campaign alongside allies, which mobilised 66 EU organisations and 71 experts, EU countries are now legally required to reduce their food waste by 2030.

Starting in 2025, all EU member states must cut household, retail and catering food waste by 30% per capita, and manufacturing waste by 10%, by 2030.

We are proud to have secured this historic target, the first of its kind worldwide, projected to reduce 14 million tonnes of food waste across the EU.