The Consumer Goods Forum‘s Food Waste Coalition has teamed up with Capgemini to release a new report analysing how food waste can be viewed as a ‘strategic opportunity to drive business value, innovation, and resilience’.
The report, Turning waste into value: A blueprint for collective food waste transformation, seeks to reframe how food waste is addressed by businesses, and the role that coordinated business action can play in reducing it.
A significant crisis
As the report notes, food waste represents a ‘significant environmental, social, and economic crisis’, with around one third of all food produced – equivalent to around 1.3 billion tonnes – lost or wasted each year. This results in an economic impact to the global economy of around $940 billion, as well as generating 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year.
This means that the carbon footprint of food waste, if measured as a country, would rank third globally, behind China and the United States.
Taking the initiative
The Turning waste into value report proposes a two-pronged approach to tackling the issue – improving production processes, planning, and consumption patterns to encourage waste prevention, and valorising unavoidable waste by converting it into new products or applications.
The report also provides a three-stage playbook to assist businesses with accelerating action, from ‘setting solid foundations to tackling hard-to-reduce waste through collaboration and consumer engagement’, The Consumer Goods Forum noted.
It provides best-practice examples from members of The Consumer Goods Forum, including Kraft Heinz, Bel Group, Tesco, Loblaw, and Walmart.
Member initiatives highlighted in the report average 6.9 kilograms of food waste per tonne handled, with some targeted interventions leading to double-digit percentage reductions in waste, alongside cost savings and reductions in associated emissions.
The Consumer Goods Forum’s Food Waste Coalition seeks to unite retailers, manufacturers, and partners in driving systemic change across the food value chain. Read more here.
