A new campaign to tackle the global food waste crisis has been launched today (22 January) by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and partners.

The Think.Eat.Save. Reduce Your Foodprint campaign – supported by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), Feeding the 5000 and other partners, including national governments – hopes to ‘dramatically cut’ the 1.3 billion tonnes of food lost or wasted each year and help ‘shape a sustainable future’ by educating consumers, retailers and the hospitality industry on the steps it can take to prevent wasteful habits.

The new campaign came about after the Rio+20 Summit in June 2012 saw Heads of State and governments commit to a 10-Year Framework of Programmes for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Patterns to ‘sustain the world’s food production base, reduce associated environmental impacts, and feed a growing human population’.

As well as providing tips to consumers and retailers to ‘accelerate action’ (such as buying ‘funny’, misshapen fruit and veg), the campaign also provides an information-sharing platform for those running campaigns to exchange ideas and ‘create a truly global culture of sustainable consumption of food’.

‘Transformation’ in food production

Launching the new campaign, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, said: “In a world of seven billion people, set to grow to nine billion by 2050, wasting food makes no sense – economically, environmentally and ethically.”

Steiner warned that throwing away food not only contributes to the generation of greenhouse gases through decomposition and unnecessary transport but also wastes other precious resources such as land and water.

According to the campaign, wasteful habits cannot continue if the world is to protect its most valued resources. Currently, more than 20 per cent of all cultivated land, 30 per cent of forests and 10 per cent of grasslands are ‘undergoing degradation’; nine per cent of freshwater resources are withdrawn with 70 per cent of this due to ‘irrigated agriculture’; and ‘overfishing and poor management’ has led to ‘overexploitation’ of 30 per cent of marine fish stocks.

“To bring about the vision of a truly sustainable world, we need a transformation in the way we produce and consume our natural resources”, Steiner added.

"There can be no other area that is perhaps so emblematic of the opportunities for a far more resource-efficient and sustainable world – and there is no other issue that can unite North and South and consumers and producers everywhere in common cause.”

Food waste could feed all the hungry

José Graziano da Silva, FAO’s Director-General added that in ‘industrialised’ regions, almost half of the total food lost, “around 300 million tonnes annually”, occurs because “producers, retailers and consumers discard food that is still fit for consumption”.

“This is more than the total net food production of Sub-Saharan Africa, and would be sufficient to feed the estimated 870 million people hungry in the world”, he said.

“If we can help food producers to reduce losses through better harvesting, processing, storage, transport and marketing methods, and combine this with profound and lasting changes in the way people consume food, then we can have a healthier and hunger-free world.

“Together, we can reverse this unacceptable trend and improve lives.”

The campaign is supported by WRAP and the European Commission, with Dr. Liz Goodwin, WRAP’s CEO, saying: “With a rising population, even more pressure is going to be put on resources, and we are excited to be a partner in UNEP and FAO’s Think.Eat.Save campaign, which is a great start to tackling food waste on a global scale.”

Janez Potocnik, European Commissioner for the Environment, added: “In the EU we have set ourselves a target to halve edible food waste by 2020 and to virtually eliminate landfilling by 2020… Our work fits perfectly with the launch of this initiative.”

Find out more about the Think.Eat.Save campaign.

Restaurants’ food waste ‘unacceptable’

In related news, the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) has found that restaurants ‘unacceptably’ waste almost five times more food than the average UK household, throwing away around 21 tonnes of food waste a year (almost half a kilo per diner).

Managing Director of the SRA has now urged the industry to tackle its unacceptable food waste practices by adopting more sustainable practices, such as offering customers food bags for their leftovers.

"Diners and restaurants need to work together and start equating value with quality rather than quantity", he maintained.

"Restaurants should also make diners feel more comfortable about asking, and diners should feel free to ask to take home leftovers from a meal for which they have paid."

To encourage the practice, the SRA’s ‘Too Good to Waste’ campaign offered restaurants free 100 per cent biodegradable boxes to give to customers wishing to take away their leftovers.

Read more about global food waste.