SAVE FOOD Initiative welcomes its 100th industry partner
By Canadian Packaging Staff
Sustainability FAO Food and Agriculture Organization Messe Dusseldorf Nestle SA Save Food Initiative UNFAONestle is the newest major company to join the initiative that will work together to fight against food loss and food waste.
A growing number of companies and organizations have banded together to support the SAVE FOOD Initiative dedicated to the fight against global food loss and waste.
Nestlé S.A.—a Swiss multinational food and beverage company headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland and the world’s biggest food company by revenue—has joined SAVE FOOD Initiative as its 100th industrial company, who along with other in various associations and media are now working within SAVE FOOD, a broad-based alliance that covers large stretches of the food value chain.
Globally, each year about one-third of all food is thrown away or lost, while some 842 million people suffer from hunger at the same time.
To solve this unseemly paradox, in 2011, Messe Düsseldorf and the United Nation‘s FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) jointly launched the SAVE FOOD Initiative, which has also been enjoying support from the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP) since the beginning of 2013.
By networking with its public partner organizations and members in industry, the initiative aims to identify specific ways of reducing international food loss and waste.
“Reducing food loss and waste is an important part of the journey to be able to feed 9.6 billion people by 2050. We are delighted to join the SAVE FOOD Initiative as the complex issue of addressing food loss and waste can only be tackled through an holistic and collaborative approach. NESTLE ® is firmly committed to further reducing food loss and waste along the entire production chain from farm to consumers and beyond,” says Nestle global R&D (research and development) sustainability manager Dr. Anne Roulin.
The SAVE FOOD approach
To achieve its goal of a substantial reduction in food loss and waste, the SAVE FOOD Initiative is pursuing four successive goals:
- It is essential to draw the necessary attention to the problem and raise awareness.
- The involvement of industry makes it possible to pool the resources of private and public organizations.
- The combination of expertise that arises in this process is used for the development of basic strategies and programs.
- Building on this, the aim is to establish concrete investment programs that encourage and call for engagement by public and private enterprises.
Central to the SAVE FOOD approach is its networking with industry, because international organizations rely on cooperation with industry in the battle against food loss and waste.
The interpack show is a premiere tradeshow for the packaging sector and related processing industries, and is playing an important part in this initiative by contributing the expertise of its international contacts in industry and associations to the initiative’s work.
At the upcoming interpack 2014, a SAVE FOOD congress on the subject of food loss and waste, bringing together experts from industry, the political sphere and civil society, will take place in Düsseldorf on May 7-8.
A multi-faceted global issue
The reasons for food loss and waste differ greatly from one region of the world to the next. In the less developed countries, up to 40 per cent of food spoils before it even reaches the consumer. By contrast, in the western industrialized nations like Germany, food waste mainly takes place at the end of the food value chain—with the consumer.
Here, up to 30 per cent of all food is disposed of unused. Just one-quarter of the food currently lost worldwide would be sufficient to feed all the world’s hungry.
Companies interested in joining SAVE FOOD can contact Isabel Chanteaux, Tel. +49 211 4560 208, or via e-mail at ChanteauxI@messe-duesseldorf.de.
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