1 July 2016 | James Richards
Food waste and loss is costing the global economy around $990 billion annually, according to the European Council.
At a meeting of its general secretariat, the council highlighted the enormous economic, social and environmental consequences of food waste, which it said amounted to 1.3 billion tonnes a year.
Summarising recent initiatives and research in the area, the council presented a range of recommendations for member states and the European Commission. It found that food ultimately lost or wasted consumes about a quarter of all the water used for agricultural purposes; it requires a cropland area the size of China; is responsible for an estimated 8% of greenhouse gas emissions; and contributes to the loss of biodiversity.
With countries in the EU currently wasting 88 million tones of food, the European Council said that reforms needed to be made with the aid of new technologies. ‘Bio-refining’ could be “among the economically and environmentally beneficial ways of handling food losses and waste when food resources are no longer suited for people or animals.”
The council also referenced a European Commission legislative proposal for an amendment to an existing directive on waste. The amendment would seek to reinforce food waste prevention within EU waste policy. The council called for food waste generation “to be reduced at each stage in the value chain”, and for “improved monitoring and reporting of food waste levels”.
The council also urged member states to welcome the development of a common and practical EU monitoring protocol for measuring food loss and waste reduction. To this end, it stated, scientific measurement would help to achieve a baseline to help cross-national cooperation throughout the food chain. It urged member states to prioritise the prevention of food waste and promote the diversion of unavoidable food losses and waste to recycling and other forms of recovery, rather than disposal.
The UK may not, however, be bound by any of the council’s findings in the wake of its decision to leave the EU in last week’s referendum. It is not yet clear what relationship the UK will have with the trading bloc, nor how it might reshape existing legislation on waste management.
