Nestlé CEO Urges Global Business To Ramp Up Efforts In The Fight Against Food Waste

In an op-ed piece for the Huffington Post, Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke says: “Those who measure waste can better manage it. That’s the good news for people, business and the planet.”

He’s talking about the new and first-ever guidance for global business called the Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting Standard (FLW Standard) which came off the back of last month’s summit in Copenhagen, the Global Green Growth Forum.

 

Human food waste costs consumers, farmers and business approximately US$940bn every year, with an estimated one third of all food produced for people going to waste. Food waste impacts on water waste in agriculture and accounts for around eight percent of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions.

 

In the op-ed piece, Bulcke and president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, Andrew Steer, discuss how we can halve food waste by 2030, under United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3.

 

“One major hurdle to meeting these commitments has been a lack of consistent guidance… The new FLW Standard establishes consistent definition, requirements, and guidelines on what companies need to measure and how they should measure it,” Bulcke writes.

 

Food waste is a global problem and the fight against it continues to gather pace across Europe and the US.

 

In Britain there are several key groups fighting food waste, including FoodShare, a non-profit organization which fights hunger by tackling waste and diverting food to charities and community groups so it goes to vulnerable people instead of being dumped.

 

Speaking with FoodIngredientsFirst, director of food, Mark Varney, agrees with Nestlé and the importance of calculating food waste in global business and adds how the organization has been working with Nestlé for some time.

 

“Measuring food waste is an important first step to reducing food waste, and it can also help businesses to identify where edible surplus occurs in their organization – food that’s still good to eat, that can be diverted from waste and redistributed to people in need, turning an environmental problem into a social solution,” he tells us.
 
“In the UK, Nestlé has been working with FareShare to redistribute its surplus food to charities for several years, and was one of the first big manufacturers to take a structured approach to addressing food waste.”

 

“We believe a structured approach is vital to maximizing the amount of good, edible surplus that it redistributed to people in need, and that’s why we developed the FareShare Food Efficiency Framework, which helps food businesses to make charity redistribution of surplus food part and parcel of their standard business operations.”

 

Achieving Target 12.3 is ‘aligned with Nestlé’s goals’ to achieve zero waste for disposal by 2020.

 

“As the leading nutrition, health and wellness company, Nestlé is committed to reducing food loss and waste across its value chain,” Bulcke adds.

 

“Reducing food loss and waste not only helps Nestlé secure its supply of agricultural raw materials, but it will also have a positive impact on society by supporting rural development, water conservation, and food security.”

 

“Shockingly, more than 800 million people, one in nine globally, are undernourished. And yet one billion tons of food that is produced for people never gets consumed. If we can get more food to more people, this will increase their nutrition intake and improve their well-being, while reducing pressure on natural resources.”

 

He ends the piece by saying that it is a travesty that so much food is waste, but the ‘tide can be turned’ through continued collaboration and commitment.