The alarming food waste scale puts the issue among the most pressing global problems. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has been estimated that at least 30% of the food grown worldwide is lost before or wasted while reaching the consumer. Saving 50% of the food wastes would allow nourishing more than 1.6 billion people, which is the double of the number of undernourished people estimated by the FAO, and the issue becomes even more critical as the world’s population keeps growing.
Many European countries are now looking for ways to tackle the problem, with recent legislation adopted by e.g. Poland, Norway, France or the UK.
ESPRi’s expertise in this area will be boosted in the near future thanks to a large research grant from the Research Council of Norway secured by one of our founders, and a researcher at the University of Oslo, Dr. Julia Szulecka. The “Building REsponsibility And Developing Innovative Strategies for Tackling Food Waste” (BREAD) project will begin in 2019 and run for a period of 3 years.