With European elections coming up in May 2019, you probably want to know how the European Union impacts your daily life, before you think about voting. In the latest in a series of posts on what Europe does for you, your family, your business and your wellbeing, we look at what Europe does for people who hate wasting food.

Approximately 88 million tonnes of food, or 173 kilograms per person, is wasted in the EU per year, according to estimates by an EU-funded research project FUSIONS. Households and processing together account for 72 % of EU food waste.

People who hate wasting food
© SpeedKingz/ Shutterstock.com

In August 2016, an EU platform on food loss and food waste was established, to help EU countries tackle the problem. The European Commission has announced that it will try to clarify EU legislation make food donation easier and enable the use of former foodstuffs for animal feed. One important aim is to improve date marking: in particular ‘best before’ labelling, which consumers find confusing and can lead them to throw away food that could still be used. The Commission has compiled a set of good practices in food waste reduction on its food waste website, including examples of food redistribution programmes in EU countries.

The European Court of Auditors released a special report on combating food waste in January 2017. Under the new waste framework directive, the Commission will create a common methodology to calculate food waste by the end of 2019, and urge EU countries to reduce food waste by 30 % by 2025 and to halve it by 2030. The EU-funded research programme REFRESH, running until June 2019, is testing new approaches to tackle food waste through pilot projects. An EU-funded study on date marking, published in February 2018, will also inform EU prevention of food waste.

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