The “Reducing Food Loss and Waste – A Roadmap for Philanthropy” roadmap outlines more than $300 million in philanthropic investments to reduce food loss and waste.
The Roadmap aims to show how governments, philanthropy, and the private sector can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while improving food security, nutrition, incomes, and the environment, ReFED says.
ReFED is a national non-profit that works to end food loss and waste through “data-driven solutions”. The Roadmap highlights “proven solutions” and seven priority countries – Brazil, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States – ReFED says are “poised to make remarkable progress” on reducing food loss and waste.
Commenting on the roadmap, Dana Gunders, Executive Director of the non-profit ReFED, said: “Food waste is a solvable problem, and philanthropic funding is critical to developing and scaling solutions.
“This new roadmap shows where funding can have the greatest impact in the immediate future and outlines a clear path to achieve measurable progress. It is an essential contribution to reaching our global food waste reduction goals.”
The funding recommendations for philanthropy focus on five pathways: set policy to drive action, reduce food loss on farms and in production, change how the private sector operates, change consumer behaviour and culture, and support people who can coordinate work.
WRAP has shown what can be done when we bring together the right actors.
Nearly 50 organisations contributed to this new roadmap, which was led by the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), ReFED, WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), and the World Resources Institute (WRI) and funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, the Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation, the IKEA Foundation, and the Robertson Foundation.
David Rogers, International Director of WRAP, commented: “WRAP has shown what can be done when we bring together the right actors. The UK has seen more than 30% reductions in retail and manufacturing waste and significant reductions in household food waste over time.
“Over the past 6 years, our voluntary agreement model has been successfully deployed in more countries as we work with brilliant national partners to deliver change. We know this approach works, but we must increase the scale and pace of efforts to have any chance of meeting SDG 12.3.
“This roadmap shows the way. We now need donors to be the catalyst for change that the world so urgently needs.”
