Food waste reduction – slowing down or gaining momentum?

Food waste has attracted a great deal of attention both internationally and in many countries as a major issue for achieving sustainable food production and consumption and food security. One of the subsidiary goals of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels (SDG, 12.3). In the EU several statements and resolutions have been made in recent years regarding actions to combat food waste, and in a number of countries a range of initiatives have been taken with the aim of reducing food waste in the food chain not least at the retail and consumer level. Initiatives have been taken by and have involved many different actors, including government agencies, local governments, private companies, business organisations and NGO’s from civil society and new NGO’s focusing specifically on food waste have emerged in several countries. Reduction of food waste is often seen as a win-win solution and seems to unite actors, who are normally in opposition to each other, e.g. food industry and environmental and consumer movements. Nevertheless, it seems that progress in the field is still slow. Most significantly, it has been reported that food waste was reduced by 21% in the UK between 2007 and 2014. In Danish households recent figures indicate that food waste has been reduced by only 8% between 2012 and 2017. In its Special Report from autumn 2016 the European Court of Auditors concluded that the EU strategy to combat food waste should be strengthened and better coordinated and that initial steps by the Commission, including the establishment of a food waste platform in 2015, should be followed up by an action plan for the years ahead. An assessment made by probably the most prominent European NGO, WRAP, in the UK in 2015 concluded that it would be extremely challenging to achieve a reduction of food waste of 30% by 2025 from 2007 level and that the more ‘low hanging fruits’ had already been picked (Parry et al., 2014). In this paper we will review the past and ongoing development the regarding actions and initiatives to combat food waste at the retail and consumer levels with particular focus on the development within the EU. This will include attention to governance structures, the character of the means and instruments used and the interests and barriers to change for consumers as well as the retail sector. We will discuss possible changes in the way the food waste issue has been dealt with politically and among the involved actors in the private sectors and civil society, including the question of market oriented and voluntary initiatives and actions versus regulatory steps. We wioll also discuss food waste not only as a means for achieving better resource utilization but also from a perspective of food security.