The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has launched a new campaign to cut food waste, which it says could dramatically reduce the 1.3 billion tonnes of food lost or wasted each year.

The campaign: Think.Eat.Save. Reduce Your Foodprint aims to reduce food waste to tackle poverty, improve sustainability and help achieve the first Millenium Development Goal of drastically reducing hunger around the world. The new campaign specifically targets food wasted by consumers, retailers and the hospitality industry.

FAO and the United Nations Environment Programme are working with a number of international organisations including WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), Feeding the 5,000, as well as national governments, to achieve their aims.

Although the UN estimates that 1.4 billion tonnes of food is wasted each year, research from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers released earlier this month suggests the actual figure could be as high as 2 billion, or 50 percent of all food produced. Authors of the IME report Global Food: Waste Not Want Not, suggested that food waste around the world is so unacceptably high "due to poor practices in harvesting, storage and transportation, as well as market and consumer wastage," and added that if the problem of waste were addressed effectively, the need to increase food production would be dramatically reduced.

In developing nations, food loss in concentrated at the - harvesting, processing and distribution - while in more developed nations, food waste typically takes place at the retailer and consumer end of the food-supply chain.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said on launching the new UN project on Tuesday (22nd January), "In a world of seven billion people, set to grow to nine billion by 2050, wasting food makes no sense - economically, environmentally and ethically.

"Aside from the cost implications, all the land, water, fertilisers and labour needed to grow that food is wasted - not to mention the generation of greenhouse gas emissions produced by food decomposing on landfill and the transport of food that is ultimately thrown away. To bring about the vision of a truly sustainable world, we need a transformation in the way we produce and consume our natural resources."

FAO director general José Graziano da Silva added, "Together, we can reverse this unacceptable trend and improve lives. In industrialized regions, almost half of the total food squandered, around 300 million tonnes annually, occurs because producers, retailers and consumers discard food that is still fit for consumption. This is more than the total net food production of Sub-Saharan Africa, and would be sufficient to feed the estimated 870 million people hungry in the world.

"If we can help food producers to reduce losses through better harvesting, processing, storage, transport and marketing methods, and combine this with profound and lasting changes in the way people consume food, then we can have a healthier and hunger-free world"

Environmental constraints: the pressing need for greater sustainability

The global food system has profound implications for the environment, and producing more food than is consumed only exacerbates the pressures. These pressures include:

• More than 20 per cent of all cultivated land, 30 per cent of forests and 10 per cent of grasslands are undergoing degradation;
• Globally 9 per cent of the freshwater resources are withdrawn, 70 per cent of this by irrigated agriculture;
• Agriculture and land use changes like deforestation contribute to more than 30 per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions;
• Globally, the agri-food system accounts for nearly 30 per cent of end-user available energy;
• Overfishing and poor management contribute to declining numbers of fish, some 30 per cent of marine fish stocks are now considered overexploited.

UNEP's Mr. Steiner said, "There can be no other area [than food production] that is perhaps so emblematic of the opportunities for a far more resource-efficient and sustainable world - and there is no other issue that can unite North and South and consumers and producers everywhere in common cause."

According to FAO, roughly 95 per cent of food loss and waste in developing countries are unintentional losses at early stages of the food supply chain due to financial, managerial and technical limitations in harvesting techniques; storage and cooling facilities in difficult climatic conditions; infrastructure; packaging and marketing systems.

However, in the developed world, the end of the chain is far more significant. At the food manufacturing and retail levels, large quantities of food are wasted due to inefficient practices, quality standards that over-emphasize appearance, confusion over date labels, and consumers being quick to throw away edible food due to over-buying, inappropriate storage and preparing meals that are too large.

Per-capita waste by consumers is between 95 and 115 kg a year in Europe and North America/Oceania, while consumers in sub-Saharan Africa, south and south-eastern Asia each throw away only 6 to 11 kg a year. According to WRAP, the average UK family could save £680 per year ($1,090) and the UK hospitality sector could save £724 million ($1.2 billion) per year by tackling food waste.

WRAP spokesperson Dr Liz Goodwin said, "In the UK, we have shown how tackling food waste through engaging with consumers and establishing collective agreement with retailers and brands, reduces environmental pressures and aids economic growth. With a rising population, even more pressure is going to be put on resources."

She said the new UN campaign represents a good opportunity to tackle food waste on a global scale.

Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for the Environment, also lent support to the project on Tuesday. He said, "In the EU we have set ourselves a target to halve edible food waste by 2020 and to virtually eliminate landfilling by 2020; the Commission is planning to present ideas next year on the sustainability of the food system which will have a strong focus on food waste.

"Less food waste would lead to more-efficient land use, better water resource management, more sustainable use of phosphorus, and it would have positive repercussions on climate change. Our work fits perfectly with the launch of this initiative."

The campaign's focal point is a website, which provides simple tips to consumers and retailers alike and, the UN hopes, will provide a platform for those running campaigns to exchange ideas and create a truly global culture of sustainable consumption of food.