Tristram Stuart Just Joined an Exciting New Food Waste Fighting Coalition 

Today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Feedback Founder Tristram Stuart joined Champions 12.3 – a powerful new coalition of food waste fighters inspiring and leading action to reduce food waste around the globe.

Champions 12.3 aims to speed up action on meeting UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3, which specifically seeks to halve per capita food waste and reduce food losses by 2030.  Having first proposed a 50% reduction target for food waste in his 2009 book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Waste Scandal, Tristram thinks:

“It is immensely satisfying that the global outcry against food waste, echoing throughout the supply chain, from farmers down to citizens, has now been amplified and crystallised by the United Nations in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals. It is ambitious; it will be challenging but achievable; above all else, if we strive to work together, we can make the solutions to this colossal problem delicious and nutritious, helping to feed the world and save the planet in the one swoop.”

The coalition brings together an array of government ministers, global institution executives, civil society leaders and 30 CEOs. Champions 12.3 has an inspiring line-up of leaders such as:

Achim Steiner –Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme

Eva Kjer Hansen – Minister of Environment and Food, Denmark

Sam Kass – Senior Food Analyst at NBC News and former U.S. White House Chef

Liz Goodwin – Chief Executive Officer, Waste and Resources Action Programme.

Together these food waste fighting heroes will inspire ambition, mobilise action, and accelerate progress toward achieving SDG 12.3, creating more sustainable consumption and production habits around the globe.

The excitement of Champions 12.3  also takes place alongside the launch of a new food waste project – YieldWise – by The Rockefeller Foundation. YieldWise is a seven-year, $130 million initiative to demonstrate how food loss and waste can be cut in half globally. The Foundation’s President, Dr. Judith Rodin, is also a Champion 12.3. Feedback was an early grantee of the Rockefeller Foundation’s food waste initiative. Tristram adds, “we are immensely proud and extremely pleased that this has come to fruition in such a spectacular and thrilling way. We look forward to working with the Rockefeller Foundation to bring about their ambitious program to turn wasted harvests into a resource available to feed people and protect the planet”.

Food loss and waste has significant economic, social, and environmental consequences.  Globally, a third of all food is lost or wasted from farm to fork. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), food loss and waste amounts to $940 billion in global annual economic losses. Food waste also consumes about one quarter of all water used by agriculture, requires cropland area the size of China, and generates about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing food waste has an array of benefits from decreasing the negative impact of food production on the environment to saving money for farmers, companies, and households.

Please follow Champions 12.3 to keep up-to-date on their fight against food waste.