Europe’s Food Industry Steps up Efforts to Tackle Food Waste

6 June 2013 --- With the theme of this year’s World Environment Day focusing on food waste, Europe’s food and drink manufacturers are taking concrete steps towards tackling this major societal problem within FoodDrinkEurope, the trade body representing the interests of Europe’s food and drink industry at EU level.

One such example is the Joint Stakeholder Declaration on Food Wastage entitled ‘Every Crumb Counts’, due to be formally launched on 25 June alongside the FoodDrinkEurope novel Food Wastage Toolkit, developed to help food manufacturers reduce and prevent food waste by sharing best practice and guidance throughout the industry. The co-signatories to the Joint Declaration will pledge not only to work towards preventing edible food waste, but also to promoting a life-cycle approach to reducing wastage and to proactively feeding into European, national and global solutions and initiatives in this area.

Europe’s food and drink industry has been mindful of the need to address this issue for some time. Exactly one year ago, coinciding with World Environment Day, FoodDrinkEurope published its ‘Environmental Sustainability Vision Towards 2030’ (1) setting out a key commitment on food waste: “The industry will work with food chain and other stakeholder, policy-makers, retailers and consumers organisations, to reduce and, where possible, avoid food waste along the food chain”(2) . The launch of the Joint Declaration with food chain partners presents the embodiment of FoodDrinkEurope members’ work in this regard.

Commenting on World Environment Day, FoodDrinkEurope President, Jesús Serafín Pérez, said: “Food waste presents a serious societal problem today that will but worsen in the future if we do not work together to find meaningful solutions to reduce it. Marking the one-year anniversary of the launch of the FoodDrinkEurope ‘Environmental Sustainability Vision Towards 2030’ Report, , FoodDrinkEurope promised, as part of its commitments in that Vision, to work together with partners along the food chain to ensure the reduction and prevention of food waste. The Joint Declaration and the Food Waste Toolkit are two practical examples of FoodDrinkEurope’s efforts deliver on these commitments. We hope that with the active involvement of the membership in rolling out the Industry Toolkit, we will be a force for good in promoting best practice to tackle waste in the food processing industry. Meanwhile, with the support of other organisations as co-signatories of the Declaration, we hope that, together, we will be able to make a meaningful difference in tackling this problem head-on and motivate others to join us in our work.”