Nestlé becomes 100th member of initiative to cut food waste

By Caroline SCOTT-THOMAS

- Last updated on GMT

Nestlé becomes 100th member of initiative to cut food waste

Related tags Food and agriculture organization

Nestlé has become the latest member of the Save Food initiative, which aims to draw on both the public and private sectors to address massive food waste and loss in every part of the food supply network.

The project is a joint initiative from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Messe Düsseldorf GmbH, aiming to engage industry in tackling food wastage around the world. According to FAO figures, it would take just a quarter of the food lost in production or wasted at retail and at a final consumer level to feed all of the world’s hungry.

Nestlé’s global R&D sustainability manager Dr Anne Roulin said in a statement that the company was committed to reducing food loss and waste from the farm to consumers.

“Reducing food loss and waste is an important part of the journey to be able to feed 9.6 billion people by 2050,”​ she said. “…The complex issue of addressing food loss and waste can only be tackled through an holistic and collaborative approach.”

The FAO says that $990bn worth of food is currently lost or wasted each year – about seven times the amount spent on development aid in 2011-12.

“In view of the strain on resources it is always more efficient to limit losses along the entire value chain than to step up production,”​ said Robert van Otterdijk, FAO agro-industry officer and team leader of Save Food.

Save Food has four goals:

  • Drawing attention to the problem and raising awareness
  • Involving industry to pool the resources of the private and public sectors
  • Combining expertise to develop basic strategies and programmes
  • Establishing investment programmes to encourage engagement from both public and private organisations

More information about the initiative, including on how to join, is available here​.

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1 comment

Fresh Food Wate Reduction

Posted by Rod Averbuch,

The large amount of global food waste is a lose-lose situation for the environment, the struggling families in today’s tough economy and for the food retailers. We should address the fresh food waste problem in every link in our fresh food supply chain. For example, the excess inventory of perishable food items close to their expiration on supermarket shelves causes waste.
The consumer “Last In First Out” shopping behavior might be one of the weakest links of the fresh food supply chain.
Why not let the consumer perform the perishables rotation for the supermarket by offering him automatic and dynamic purchasing incentives for perishables approaching their expiration dates before they end up in a landfill?
The new emerging GS1 DataBar standard enables automatic applications that offer dynamic incentives for perishables approaching their expiration dates.
The “End Grocery Waste” application, which is based on GS1 DataBar standard, encourages efficient consumer shopping behavior that maximizes grocery retailer revenue and makes fresh food affordable for all families while effectively reducing the global carbon footprint. You can look this application up at EndGroceryWaste site.

Rod,
Chicago, IL

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