Around one third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted.
Food waste represents a substantial loss of resources such as land, water, energy and labour.

Put into relation, these numbers tell us that the entire world’s hungry people could be “lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe”! Worldwide, a total of 842 million people were estimated to be suffering from chronic hunger. This means that around 1 in 8 people in the world regularly not getting enough food to conduct an active life, while in Europe we have nearly twice as much food as is required by the nutritional needs of our population.

In 2014, the Prevention Thematic Days focused on the issue of food waste and how to prevent it.

Find out all about the Prevention Thematic Days 2014 – Stop Food Waste! in this report.

To highlight this topic and to encourage and support EWWR Action Developers to implement actions around this issue, a number of tools have been developed:

Activity sheets & tools

• Food waste calculator
• Composting training
• Feeding the 5k event
• Food donation campaign
• Gleaning activity
• Food waste diary
• Cooking with leftovers workshop
• Zero waste lunch
• Eco-restaurant

And a lot of support documents are available in the archive!

Interesting links

• Why is waste reduction important? Discover why and get inspired by reduce actions!
• Play the NLWA food waste game!
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Ireland: Stop food Waste

Recipes: Cooking with leftovers

• Allrecipes.com: Everyday Leftovers
• BBC GoodFood: Leftover recipes
• BigOven: Use Up Leftovers
• Holroyd City Council: Love Your Leftovers (free app)
• INCPEN: The Green Kitchen. Recipes for a better planet. (pp. 17-31)
• Love Food Hate Waste: Healthy recipes with leftovers
• North London Waste Authority: North London Food Lovers’ Cookbook
• Nottingham County Council & LFHW: Nottinghamshire Sustainable Cookery Book
• The Guardian: 15 recipe ideas for leftover pasta
• Zero Waste Europe: 27 Blogs Sharing Creative Ways to Reuse Your Leftovers