Food Waste Intelligence

The world is at an inflection point regarding climate change and the many sustainability challenges underlying theUN’s Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), including food waste reduction.

We’re at thehalfway point toward the 2030 due date for the SDGs, but we are not moving fast enough on many of them to make that deadline.

Given the critical nexus aspect of food waste, it is especially important that the world get on track for halving global food waste by 2030 as called for by SDG Target 12.3.

Today, September 29^th, we celebrate the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, an important day which was added to the UN calendar three years ago – and we were excited to join our colleagues at the Future Food Institute in bringing this to fruition.

Three years from its creation, the need to draw attention to the scale of the food waste challenge is more important than ever.  A new report from the World Wildlife Fund, for example, notes that 40% of global food production is lost or wasted annually, with food waste alone accounting for 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

Thus, at a high level, with over 800 million hungry and myriad environmental externalities associated with food waste, responsible foodservice organizations already have strong incentive to focus on preventing the occurrence of food waste.

After a lengthy Covid-related break, Leanpath was pleased to join numerous colleagues, partners and food system changemakers for the ReFED 2022 Food Waste Solutions Summit in Minneapolis last week.

We would like to share our congratulations to the ReFED team for an expansive, exceptionally well-curated session that covered multiple sectors and themes (consumer change, climate, capital, DEIJ, health, innovation, etc.) while underscoring the need for urgent action to halve food waste in accordance with the 2030 United Nations’ goal.

The action focus at the summit was clear. Upon entering the venue, participants were greeted with several inspirational messages on large banners drawing from the ReFED Insights Engine and the Roadmap to 2030. One message reminded everyone that “Food waste is a solvable problem. Here’s how to do it.” Another noted, “No Time. No Food to Waste. What actions will you take to promote the key insights and learnings from the Summit?”

In keeping with that inspirational framing, below are five (non-exhaustive) key takeaways from the summit.

Leanpath is thrilled to be nominated for the prestigious Earthshot Prize.

The Earthshot Prize seeks to catalyze efforts to repair and regenerate the planet by scaling solutions in five core areas that underpin the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Protect and Restore Nature, Clean our Air, Revive our Oceans, Build a Waste-free World, and Fix our Climate. Each of these five areas is critical, and all are detailed further in the organization’s Roadmap to Regeneration summary, which also includes a simple yet powerful equation that underlies the iniative: Urgent Optimism + Action = Change.