Addressing Food Waste: CSCP Joins the European Consumer Food Waste Forum

Data shows that the highest share of food waste is generated at the consumption stage, including households and food services such as school, hospital, or company canteens. Behavioural factors are among the leading causes of food waste at the consumer level. A group of multi-disciplinary researchers and practitioners from Europe are working together to collect evidence on these topics, but also find solutions and develop tools to help reduce consumer food waste.

Together, they represent the European Consumer Food Waste Forum, set up by the Joint Research Centre in collaboration with DG SANTE, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety. The forum’s aim is to gather evidence and identify a variety of practical solutions to reduce food waste at the consumer level, including household and food services. The forum will prepare research- and evidence-based recommendations and develop a compendium of effective tools that can be applied by the EU Member States as well as regional and local administrations to help reduce consumer food waste.

In 2022, CSCP’s Senior Project Manager, Nora Brüggemann joined the forum. As an expert on food waste reduction, she will draw on experiences made from CSCP projects such as the EU-funded REFRESH project or the coordination and moderation of the Dialogue Forum of Retail and Wholesale to Reduce Food Waste in Germany. Brüggemann will also work toward creating synergies with our recently-launched project, CHORIZO and link to projects such as REIF, which is looking into approaches and concepts to reduce food waste based on Artificial Intelligence. Brüggemann will also draw on learnings from our behaviour change programmes, the Academy of Change (AoC) and weiter_wirken.

The forum will disseminate its results in summer 2023.

For further information, please contact Nora Brüggemann.