FOOD LOSS & WASTE Food Loss & Waste
Why Tackling Food Loss And Waste Should Be On Your Agenda
Globally, there’s a distinction between food loss and waste.
Food loss is the decrease in quality or quantity of food due to decisions and actions by those in the food supply chain – , from production up to, but excluding, retailers, food service providers and consumers.
Food waste is the decrease in quality or quantity of food due to decisions and actions of retailers, food service providers and consumers.
Food loss and waste includes the edible and inedible parts of food and occur for many reasons, from spoilage, inaccurate forecasting, over-ordering and process loss, to households throwing out uneaten food.
A third of all food grown is lost or wasted, while 24% of all water used in agriculture is used on food that ultimately will not be consumed by humans.
The direct impact of food loss and waste is hugely significant, given that 828 million people globally, or almost one in ten, are affected by hunger.
However, the impact of food loss and waste goes far beyond undernourishment.
In addition to wasting valuable water, energy, fuel and land, food loss and waste produce methane when rotting in landfill.
Approximately 6-8% of all human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from food waste. The food lost or wasted in the US alone is the equivalent to the GHG produced by 32.6 million cars. If ‘food waste’ was a country, it would be the world’s third-biggest emitter of GHGs, behind China and the US.
Tackling Global Food Waste
By 2030, UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3 aims to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post- harvest losses.
At current levels, we believe achieving that goal seems ambitious at best. Food loss and waste are often overlooked, and it’s clear the potential impacts are not understood.
Research has shown that every dollar invested in reducing food loss and waste saves $14 in operating costs.
That 14-fold return on investment can be saved or reinvested into other sustainability initiatives that require financial support.
WHAT’S IN STORE | 2025
Add the potential environmental and societal benefits, and the business case for addressing food loss and waste is incredibly compelling.
Reduction is step one, but the goal for businesses is to eliminate food loss and waste altogether. With the right assistance, processes and procedures, this is achievable.
Understanding Food Loss And Waste – From Farm To Plate
When we think about food loss and waste, we may revert to our personal experiences, like food in our fridge that is thrown out after its sell-by date.
From a business perspective, maybe it's a 5% waste tolerance on a production line.
However, food loss and waste occur all the way through the journey from farm to plate.
Across the globe, different challenges are evident.
In developing countries, farm practices and getting food to processing are the biggest hurdles, while in many developed countries, the challenges are spread more evenly across the whole supply chain.
In China, a great deal of work is being undertaken to build the infrastructure needed to reduce food loss from farm to processing, while in France, retailers have been forbidden to destroy unsold food products since 2016.
The Food Recovery Hierarchy
While the goal for every organization should be eliminating food loss and waste, good practice is to repurpose or redirect if elimination isn’t yet possible.
The Food Recovery Hierarchy, published by the US Environmental Protection Agency, details a series of actions organizations can take.
After eliminating food waste in the first instance (in order of preference):
• Feeding hungry people (donating to food banks, soup kitchens and shelters).
• Feeding animals (donating food scraps to animal feed).
• Industrial (providing waste oil for rendering and fuel conversion, and food scraps for digestion to recover energy).
• Compost (create a nutrient-rich soil amendment). © 2025 International Dairy Deli Bakery Association Food Loss & Waste 110
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