Expert Advise on the European Consumer Food Waste Forum

The European Consumer Food Waste Forum is a multi-disciplinary forum set up in October 2021 by the Joint Research Centre, which seeks to enable the EU's transition to a sustainable food system by finding solutions and developing tools that help to reduce food waste at the consumer level, including household and food services. Stephanie Wunder and 15 other practitioners and researchers will identify and develop multi-dimensional tools to curb consumer food waste, considering both the motivation of consumers as well as their ability and opportunity to change related behaviour. The tools will be multi-level addressing both the role of consumers and that of other key players engaged in food waste reduction.

As foreseen in the EU Farm to Fork Strategy, the proposal is to establish targets to reduce food waste across the EU by end 2023, and to revise EU rules on date marking ('use by' and 'best before' dates) by end 2022. Against this backdrop, the forum aims at gathering data and identifying evidence-based interventions and solutions that will contribute to the work of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste and that of other players. Key issues on which the practitioners and researchers are working include the drivers of consumer food waste and levers for behavioural change, the current activities to address reduction of consumer food waste in EU Member States, and the configuration of a multi-dimensional, multi-level, and evidence-based set of tools for actors engaged in food waste prevention.