Food Waste Coalition of Action of the Consumer Goods Forum includes many familiar names

The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) has recently launched a CEO-led Coalition of Action on Food Waste, bringing together 14 of the world's largest retailers and manufacturers with the goal of halving per capita global food loss at the retailer and consumer levels.

The Coalition and its members, with their explicit CEO engagement, action-oriented commitments and passion for accelerating sustainable change on a global level, will be able to contribute to the effort to reduce food loss in supply chains worldwide with their ongoing collaboration.

The new Coalition will build off five years of experience that the CGF has on tackling this issue, dating back to its ground-breaking Food Waste Resolution and call for standardised date labelling.

Food waste is an enormous environmental, social and economic problem. A third of food produced is never eaten, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tonnes of food lost each year. That represents an economic cost to the global economy of USD 940 billion.

Food waste is also responsible for adding 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into the planet’s atmosphere annually, so if food waste were a country, its carbon footprint would be third only to China and the US.

The 14 initial members of the Coalition are Ahold Delhaize, Barilla, Bel Group, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Majid Al Futtaim, McCain Foods, Merck Animal Health, Metro AG, Migros Ticaret, Nestlé, Sainsbury, Tesco, and Walmart.

The Coalition is sponsored at the CGF Board level by Dave Lewis, Group Chief Executive of Tesco, and Max Koeune, President and CEO of McCain Foods.

The Coalition Steering Committee is co-chaired by Francisco Cordero of Kellogg Company and Brittni Furrow of Ahold Delhaize USA.

Through their participation in the Coalition, these members will be able take important steps to reduce waste by fulfilling three Coalition commitments. First, the Coalition recognises the critical importance of measuring and reporting food loss data, with members committing to report their data by 2021.

Second, in support of Champions 12.3, a long-time CGF partner and multi-stakeholder organisation working to reach UN SDG 12.3, Coalition members agree to scale up Champions 12.3’s 10x20x30 Initiative—extending their collaboration beyond the Coalition to engage their suppliers and other stakeholders.

Finally, members commit to addressing food loss at the post-harvest level, which is responsible for creating 30 percent of food waste, by engaging with stakeholders to develop innovative and effective food loss prevention strategies.

Ignacio Gavilan, Director of Environmental Sustainability at the CGF:
 

“Food loss is a serious global problem and it can only be effectively addressed through committed collective action. The launch of the Coalition of Action on Food Waste is a positive and important step to creating sustainable food strategies and preventing loss, and we look forward to seeing the impact the Coalition will have on the issue.”

To support the global commitments of the Coalition, the group are also creating regional working groups to drive implementation at the local level, and to help engage key stakeholders in those regions. Groups include those in North America, Latin America and China and Japan.

With its commitments and actions, the Coalition will be able to have a powerful role in the effort to reduce waste, reducing stress on the environment, benefitting the global economy and ensuring more food makes it to stores and onto consumers’ tables in the process. For more information about the Coalition, visit www.tcgffoodwaste.com.

The CGF's Managing Director Wai-Chan Chan has also joined Champions 12.3 as a 'Champion', one of several executives dedicated to inspiring ambition, mobilising action, and accelerating progress toward achieving SDG Target 12.3 by 2030.