Food Losses and Waste in European Cities

Overview

The aim of the present work is to elaborate an overview on the variety of practices that European cities are implementing to address Food Losses and Waste (FLW) issues. This document was discussed on 4th April 2018 in Amsterdam during the EUROCITIES Working Group Food and Waste joint meeting, at the EUROCITIES Environment Forum of and shared with the European Commission through the EU Platform on Food Losses and Waste lead by DG SANTE. The purpose is to collect experiences and gather cities interested on these topics. The paper does not include any new research, it is a set of practices that the City of Milan, as food knowledge hub, collected through its local Food Policy and the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact. The Municipality of Milan participates in several spaces of discussion and planning at seveal levels (from local to global), thus the Milan Food Policy is the result of a wide knowledge mobilization. Sharing this know-how and making it open and accessible will contribute to define the innvoative role of Milan on Food Losses and Waste, as a legacy of the EXPO Milano 2015 devoted to the theme “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”. This working document consists of four main sections: the first contains general remarks and final conclusions from sources; the second is a collection of cities’ practices; the last encompasses key European initiatives and urban networks focused on FLW actions. A special attention is given to the case of Milan in the third part, where after EXPO 2015 and the adoption of the local Food Policy various actions have been launched at different scale (urban, metropolitan, regional, national) involving different actors (local authorities, social actors, private and academic sector). It was possible to draft this document because the Food Policy Office of Milan has access to updated information on many activities in progress at EU level (Commission, resarch bodies and cities).