The Department for the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC) has today (Thursday 27 January) launched a public consultation on Ireland’s draft National Roadmap for Food Waste Prevention.

The roadmap will define a series of actions to ultimately halve our food waste by 2030.

The DECC said food waste is a global problem with environmental, social and economic consequences. Growing, processing and transporting food all use significant resources.

How does food waste occur?

Food waste can occur for a number of reasons, at different points in the food supply chain.

These points include: primary production; manufacturing and processing; restaurants and food services; retail and distribution; and in homes.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that Ireland generated around 1.1 million tonnes of food waste in 2019.

Tackling food waste is one of the key actions we can take to achieve sustainability, to help fight climate change and to support the transition to a circular economy, according to the DECC.

Ireland has committed to reducing food waste by 50% by 2030, in line with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The development of a national roadmap for the prevention of food waste aims to guide the country towards this objective.

Government action

Developing a national food waste prevention roadmap is part of the commitments made in Ireland’s Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy and the government’s 2021 Climate Action Plan.

Commenting on the opening of the consultation, Minister of State for Communications and the Circular Economy, Ossian Smyth, said:

“Preventing food waste is a climate action that we can all take, as part of our daily behavior. Every individual, every household, every business and every organization has a role to play.

“The Irish National Food Waste Prevention Roadmap will bring food waste prevention measures, across all key sectors of the food supply chain, in a consistent way.

“This will provide a pathway to achieve the goal of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030,” he added.

Focus of the roadmap

Key areas of focus for the roadmap project include establishing Ireland’s food waste baseline, from which we will aim to achieve a 50% reduction by 2030.

This baseline data will also inform how we set milestones.

Additionally, the draft roadmap defines how we will measure and report on food waste. It defines actions on: the sorting of food waste; food donation; to research; and communications to help households avoid food waste.

The roadmap project also looks at what the public sector can do to tackle food waste through better sourcing practices.

Submissions on the draft National Food Waste Prevention Roadmap can now be submitted by the public and interested stakeholders.

The closing time and date for submissions is 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 24, 2022.