PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
The EU Roadmap for a resource-efficient Europe programme has identified food production and consumption as key sectors where resource efficiency should be improved. This initiative is aimed at the whole food supply chain with the ambition of significantly reducing the disposal of edible food waste in the EU by 2020. The European Commission calls for close cooperation between stakeholders, experts and Member States in developing good practices and sharing experiences on this issue. In line with the requirements of the Waste Framework Directive, Hungary has developed a National Waste Management Plan for 2014-2020.
To support these efforts, the NFCSO is drafting a national food waste strategy for Hungary. According to recent calculations, households play the most significant role among all food chain stakeholders, with a share of 30-42% of total food waste generated. In recent studies, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) and UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) estimate the quantity of food waste generated in Hungarian households to be 39 kg per capita, or 385 000 tonnes/year in total.
OBJECTIVES
The LIFE-FOODWASTEPREV project aimed to change attitudes to food waste in Hungary, leading to a reduction in the quantity of such waste generated by Hungarian households. Specific objectives were as follows:
- To raise awareness about food waste among primary school children;
- To establish four working groups to develop good practices for stakeholders in the food chain;
- To feed conclusions from the working groups into the legislative process on food waste;
- To network with other EU countries to learn from their experiences of food waste prevention campaigns; and
- To widely disseminate the results of the project by networking with organisations across the EU.
RESULTS
The LIFE-FOODWASTEPREV project contributed to reducing food waste in Hungary as a result of its educational programme, which became the national food waste prevention programme of Hungary and achieved positive changes in national policy.
Specifically, the project team:
- Raised awareness through a food waste prevention campaign for adult consumers (reaching more than 100 million people);
- Conducted an effective School Programme for food waste prevention among primary school students (involving 300 000 students);
- Published 4 professional guides collecting food waste good practices for catering, retail, food industry and communities;
- Collaborated and cooperated with other EU Member States for international implementation of the project’s results;
- Monitored the impact of the campaign by measuring food waste generated in Hungarian households.
In Hungary, over 2.5 kg less food waste per household was generated in 2019 compared to 2016 (68.03 kg in 2016 and 65.49 kg in 2019), which would represent around a 4% reduction nationwide as a result of project actions.
The programme developed by the project was declared to be the national-level food waste prevention programme of Hungary in 2020. The project results have also been appreciated at European level. The project manager was appointed to be a member of the European Consumer Food Waste Forum set up in 2021. The results further served as a reference for the UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2021.
The 4% decrease in food wastage was estimated to have resulted in 8 EUR (2 800 HUF) savings in households on a yearly basis. The reduced food waste also represents a saving in greenhouse gas emissions, for instance due to reduced waste disposal.
Elements of the project’s ‘Good practices for food waste reduction in catering’ document have been transplanted into the ‘Guide to Good Hygienic Practice (GHP) of Food Service and Catering Services’ issued by the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture.
Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report and After-LIFE Communication Plan (see "Read more" section).
