13 Feb Food Waste: from compliance cost to door to innovation – By Diletta Parente

Reducing Food Waste is the third target objective of the Sustainable Development Goal 12 (to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns) adopted by UN States member in 2015. It calls for halving per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reducing food losses along production and supply chains by 2030.

Looking closer, food it is an important thread linking all the 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals. The way our food system is built requires a very intensive use of natural resources. The food system is the biggest cause of environmental pressure on our planet, especially related to water consumption, land degradation, land occupation and greenhouse gas emissions. It determines the living and social condition of millions of workers and the general population and, ultimately it is the cost of basics, like housing and food, that determine our purchasing power and ultimately our standard of living.

Food is, along with energy, the critical factor we need to tackle if we want to promote sustainable development worldwide. Food sustainability has four pillars: Sustainable agriculture, Food justice, Nutritional challenges, and Food loss and waste.

Immediate and effective actions are needed in all these sectors, but looking at the data points, it is Food waste in developed countries that is the low hanging fruit. The rate of Food waste varies from 30% to 40% in medium-to-high income countries (Europe, North America, and Oceania). Up to 60% of that waste is by the consumer and from consumer facing services.

1/3 of the world population is suffering the health consequences of consuming too much and unhealthy food. Meanwhile, 800 million people on earth remain undernourished. Our common objective should be creating a more efficient system that allows fresh, affordable and nutritious food to be available world-wide. But how?

Vote with your dollars has become a more and more popular saying among the people trying to raise awareness on sustainable consumption. In our globalized interconnected economy, supply and demand regulate global markets and prices. In developed countries, if we keep consuming and spending at the current rate, we will continue to increase the demand of basic foods and, consequently, their prices at the international level. These prices are affordable for us but not for countries with very low incomes. The direct consequence is that staple foods are inaccessible to large parts of the global population. The only thing we seem to feed well in these regions is the poverty loop.

Wisely using our purchasing power can go a long way. If we reduce our consumption to our real needs, cut the waste, adopt a more sustainable diet, consume local food, and recover food prioritizing human consumption over livestock, we can start changing this cycle.

The world’s population is on the rise and many sectors suggest increasing food production to feed all those people in the future. I believe it is time to support smarter and longer term solutions. Food is not scarce, food is unequally distributed and accessible among the world’s population. Sustainable solutions include promoting food sovereignty and redesigning a more resilient, circular food system. If we use our resources more wisely and introduce more efficient models to markets and production, we should be able to mitigate this problem without having to multiply food production in a world where the scarcity of natural resources and land is already a reality.

The good news is that where there is problem, there is an also an opportunity. The challenge is enormous, but it provides vast chances for ingenuity, creativity, and imagination in designing solutions for innovation. In the last few years we have seen numerous initiatives on the public and private sector. The effervescence of the private sector, with many entrepreneurs’ creating and tackling good business opportunities and a social need is the most interesting field to work within.

Through their efforts, we see is a solid case for the business of reducing Food waste and loss proved by credible data.

The World Resource Institute published a case study, The Business Case for Reducing Food Loss and Waste. It analyzes the financial impacts of historical food loss and waste reduction efforts conducted by a country, a city, and numerous companies.

The results show that the financial benefits of acting to reduce waste often significantly outweigh the costs. For companies, the return on investment in food loss and waste reduction can be high. The study analysed nearly 1,200 business sites across 17 countries and more than 700 individual companies, across a range of sectors including food manufacturing, food retail, hospitality, and food service. According to this study 99% of the cases earned a positive return on investment.

Also ReFED a US multi-stakeholder non-profit published a guide the Retail Food Waste Action guide which states that food waste represents an $18.2 billion opportunity for grocery retailers.

Many big players including Ahold Delhaize, ConAgra Brands, Danone, Kellogg Company, Nestlé, Pick n Pay, Sainsbury’s, and Tesco—are not just measuring but also publicly reporting their food loss and waste inventories, thereby pioneering best practices for the private sector.

Business have many reasons to engage in reduction strategies beyond economy. Data suggests the best employees are motivated by knowing that their company has an active policy on reducing and donating food. On the consumer side, the trends are clear: a growing number of consumers are demanding more from the brands they buy; more transparency, more responsibility, more commitment.

Leaders in companies are now facing the challenge of engaging in actions to reduce waste and doing it right. It is past the point where corporate social responsibility is considered a communications or P.R. related issue and a compliance cost. Now businesses must honestly analyze what wasting food means not only for their balance sheets, but for their business culture and identity.

Which means investing in sustainable actions, discovering or redesigning their purpose around it. Investing in those solutions that can cut costs and uncover a unique positive role that company can play in society. Such actions will finally change how a company in viewed: from what a company does to what a company is

Companies that invest early in reducing food waste and loss will not only achieve a competitive advantage, but will lead the transition to a sustainable economy.

It is time to build inclusive a sustainable prosperity to assure a stable future for the coming generations. At Valueloops, we see an exciting opportunity in helping leading companies in this effort to redesign a more holistic and regenerative economy.

We created a format, the Food waste Hackathon, which is a 2 days innovation co-creation framework especially dedicated to tackle food waste´s challenges. Thanks to its format we hope to stimulate positive disruption in old business models and create brand new ones to inspire more and more business to act.