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Evaluation of consumer food waste prevention interventions
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Evaluation of consumer food waste prevention interventions

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The EU has committed to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3, which calls for halving per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels by 2030 and reducing food losses along the food production and supply chains. As part of the Farm-to-Fork Strategy, the Commission intends to propose legally binding targets to reduce food waste levels and accelerate the EU’s progress towards the global target. The first EU-wide monitoring of food waste levels, based on a common methodology, has established a new baseline against which the EU can assess progress made over time. Over half of the food waste generated in the EU occurs at the consumption stage, as highlighted in findings reported by Member States referring to the year 2020. Targeting consumer food waste is therefore critical for achieving the future EU-level targets for food waste reduction and complying with international sustainable development efforts. Consumer food waste (both in and out of the home) is a multifaceted and complex issue influenced by food supply chain dynamics and the food environment and driven by behavioural aspects. To address the issue in a timely manner, many groups have carried out interventions to reduce food waste and/or support consumer behavioural change, but the efficiency and effectiveness of those interventions have not been consistently evaluated. To evaluate these interventions, the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) established a multi-disciplinary forum of researchers and practitioners working in the area of consumer food waste prevention under a pilot project called the European Consumer Food Waste Forum (ECFWF). As part of the project’s tasks, the ECFWF has gathered data and evaluated 78 interventions across the EU and beyond, prioritising the analysis of interventions within the scope of the ECFWF (i.e. examining only certain types of interventions). The results show that the majority of these interventions were successful in either reducing food waste quantities or changing behaviour, thus indicating that deploying well-designed and monitored behavioural change approaches can lead to substantial reductions in food waste on a large scale, as has been shown in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The extent of the impact varies between interventions and not all are likely to be scalable to the country or regional level. The results also suggest that the success of behavioural change interventions greatly depends on the combination of practices put in place (such as a combination of nudges and awareness-raising campaigns) and on the collaboration and commitment from stakeholders implementing the intervention, including from policymakers at all levels. The practical output of this project consists of the development of an evaluation framework to assess the performance of behavioural change interventions, which can be applied by researchers and practitioners in order to understand the possible impact of new interventions. Evaluation is crucial to transferring knowledge on the implementation of effective interventions and to understanding the potential scalability and the cost-effectiveness of different approaches. The results of this analysis also suggest that resources should be made available to assess the impact of interventions over the medium- to long-term to fill the knowledge gap on the longevity and sustainability of any food waste reduction or the development of new ‘low-waste’ social norms.
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ISSN 1831-9424
ISBN 978-92-68-05295-2
DOI 10.2760/224541
Katalognummer KJ-NA-31-581-EN-N
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ISSN 1831-9424 ISBN 978-92-68-05295-2 DOI 10.2760/224541 Katalognummer KJ-NA-31-581-EN-N
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