PRECIOUS: Designing More Effective Food Waste Prevention

Our new EU Horizon project, PRECIOUS targets food loss and waste, a major contributor to global emissions, by using systems thinking to prevent rebound effects and reduce environmental impacts.

Often overlooked, food waste and loss (FWL) further exacerbates food insecurity, puts a strain on waste management systems, intensifying the crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

PRECIOUS seeks to address these challenges head-on by using a systems-thinking approach to understand and mitigate the environmental impacts of FLW across the food supply chain. One of its key goals is to prevent rebound effects, situations where good intentioned measures inadvertently create new problems elsewhere in the system or end up increasing the overall emissions.

By generating reliable data on the environmental effects of FLW, PRECIOUS will help design more effective interventions that reduce waste, protect ecosystems, and fight climate change.

At the heart of PRECIOUS is its focus on multi-actor engagement, led by the CSCP. The CSCP’s role is to ensure that a wide array of stakeholders—ranging from local governments to food producers—are actively involved in the project’s implementation and testing. Through two Communities of Practice (CoPs) in Spain and Greece, and co-creation and replication in Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary, the CSCP will guide engagement efforts, tailoring them to the specific needs of each country. This approach aims to make the project’s outcomes more robust, relevant, and replicable.

Stakeholders will benefit from knowledge exchange and practical tools for FLW reduction at both local and European levels. In addition, the CSCP will lead workshops on storytelling to foster a shared vision among project partners, ensuring that the project’s goals are communicated effectively.

With 18 partners from 11 EU countries, PRECIOUS will run for four years, paving the way for a more sustainable food system and helping to reduce the environmental footprint of food waste.

For further questions, please contact Charis Hofmann.