Probably no European would have the idea to throw away ¼ of his/her weekly shopping of food. However, statistically, this is exactly the case. According to estimations of the European Commission, app 173 kg food are thrown away in the EU per person and year. At the same time, only in 2019 38.2 billion Euros were spent as direct subventions for farmers in the European Union.

The thrown away food make totally 88 million tons of waste per year. In that, 53 per cent of all thrown away food comes from private households, 30 per cent from agriculture and producers, 12 per cent from gastronomy and 5 per cent from trade. The disposal of this waste causes the emission of 170 million tons of CO2 per year.

On the other hand, about 22 per cent of all Europeans – more than 98 million people – live on the breadline. Although hunger occurs seldom in the EU, a relevant percentage of Europeans living on the breadline are undernourished or malnourished. Most of the poor people cannot afford a healthy and balanced nutrition. The plan of the EU to halve the food waste by 2020, unfortunately failed ruefully.

In the frame of our project, we would like to identify best practise examples with the potential of a European transfer that make the re-direction of goods from the shops to people in need possible or better – as this is the case with the “Food Banks” in Germany.

Besides, we would like to develop ideas for education concepts together with citizens and relevant stakeholders in order to change the purchase behaviour, to process food better and to reduce occurring food waste in private households. The education concepts shall also contain measures of sensitising for the situation of people in need and the relevant aspects of combating climate change.

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