In order to accelerate the EU’s progress towards Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3, the Commission is proposing to set legally binding food waste reduction targets to be achieved by Member States by 2030, as part of the revision of the Waste Framework Directive, adopted by the Commission on 5 July 2023.

The European Consumer Food Waste Forum, to which the Competence Centre on Behavioural Insights contributed, gathered data and identified a variety of evidence-based, practical solutions to reduce food waste at the consumer level, including households and food services.

Below, you can find the main outcomes and impacts of this project.

• Policy impacts
  • The work of the ECFWF is acknowledged and referenced on page 5 of the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive 2008/98/EC on Waste. This informed the Food waste reduction targets published on 5 July 2023.
• Scientific outputs
  • The technical report “Tools, best practices and recommendations to reduce consumer food waste - A compendium”
  • The technical report “Scoping consumer food waste: an evaluation framework of prevention interventions”
  • The scientific paper “How to reduce consumer food waste at household level: A literature review on drivers and levers for behavioural change”
  • The science for policy report “Segmenting consumers and tailoring behavioural interventions to reduce consumer food waste”
  • The public report “A simple introduction to using experiments to evaluate consumer food waste interventions”