On Tuesday, the EU Parliament’s environment committee voted to introduce EU-wide targets to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030.

The targets - part of a new Circular Economy Package (CEP) - aim to halve food waste from farm to fork, whereas previous proposals by the EU Commission only looked at retail and consumer food waste.

An estimated 88 million tonnes of food is wasted across the 28 EU States every year, and campaigners have said this could feed the EU population living in food poverty nine times over. Worldwide, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation figures suggest that up to a third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste before it can be eaten.

A coalition of 48 civil society groups from 16 states has welcomed the environment committee’s vote and demanded the targets be made legally binding. 59,000 people have also signed a Change.org and Global Citizen petition to halve the EU's food waste, which was submitted to the MEPs ahead of the vote. Campaigners believe that, if handled correctly, the EU’s CEP could be more ambitious than France’s food waste ban introduced in early 2016, which organisations in the country have criticised for focusing on large retailers’ in-store food waste, and prioritising redistribution over designing food waste out of the system in the first place.

Martin Bowman, Campaigner for This Is Rubbish, said, "We welcome this landmark vote to halve EU food waste by 2030, which is a huge victory for our campaign and the food waste movement. We particularly welcome that supply chain food waste, on farms and in manufacturing, is included in the target, which is a vital step forward to ensure not just consumers but businesses pull their weight in reducing food waste. We also welcome the adoption of the food waste hierarchy, which prioritises food waste reduction and redistribution to those in need, and was vitally needed.
 
“But it is disappointing to see only an aspirational target adopted, rather than a more binding commitment at member state level. Some forms of food losses on farms are also excluded from the targeted reduction. We are calling on the European Parliament and Council to support a truly binding food waste reduction target. Binding targets are vitally needed to face the urgent challenges of climate change, land and water depletion, and food poverty."

Martin Bowman continued, “We see time and again that voluntary codes have uneven rates of uptake and often deliver lacklustre results, whereas binding regulation like the Landfill Directive delivers a level playing field and leads to swift and dramatic improvements. If the concern is a lack of data, states which currently know how much they are wasting should be bound to reduce their food waste from 2014 baselines, and there should be a clear action plan for member states currently without this data to measure their food waste accurately by 2020, with binding targets to halve their waste from this 2020 baseline."

Kierra Box, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth, also commented, “This is a significant vote because for the first time, we have a really clear, shared plan of how food waste can be reduced and prevented. With the UK binning so much edible food, it’s clear that waste on this scale has to stop.

“However, if we’re serious about slashing food waste we need to stop aiming for change and instead make it happen. It was a lost opportunity that today’s targets aren’t binding which means countries can wriggle out of their commitments.”