If awareness were enough, why are we still losing and wasting so much food? The answer lies not only in individual choices, but in how food systems are organised – from production and storage to retail, food service and consumption. On 29 September, the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, that gap between knowing and acting deserves a closer look.
In a nutshell:
A Global Challenge in Numbers
Food loss and food waste are related, but they are not the same problem.
Food loss occurs along the supply chain between harvest and the retail stage, including during production, storage, transport and distribution. Food waste occurs at retail, in food services and in households. The distinction matters because the drivers – and therefore the solutions – differ. A crop damaged during storage requires a different intervention from food discarded because it was over-purchased or forgotten in the refrigerator.
The scale is substantial. According to the latest Eurostat data, over 58 million tonnes of food are wasted each year in the European Union. Households are responsible for 53% of this total, while the remaining 47% is generated across the rest of the food supply chain.
The impact goes far beyond the food that is thrown away. Food waste also means wasting the resources used to produce, transport and prepare it, including land, water, energy, labour and capital.
Reducing food loss and waste could therefore generate significant environmental, economic and social gains. OECD analysis estimates that achieving the UN’s SDG 12.3 target could reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by 4% and lift 137 million people out of hunger by 2030.
From Farm to Fork: Where Food is Lost and Wasted
At the production and post-harvest stage, inadequate storage, harvesting practices and infrastructure can cause significant losses. Further along the chain, transport, distribution and inventory management can lead to losses through inefficiencies and mismatches between supply and demand. At retail and in food service, over-ordering, unpredictable demand and unsold or unused food become important drivers of waste.
This means there is no single solution. Better infrastructure, cold-chain management, logistics, demand forecasting and digital inventory tools can help prevent losses and identify surplus earlier. The objective should be to intervene as early as possible, before food is lost or wasted.
Why Awareness Alone Does Not Reduce Food Waste
The consumer end of the food chain presents a different challenge.
It is tempting to frame food waste as an information problem: if consumers understood its environmental and economic costs, they would waste less. The evidence points a more complicated picture.
Household food waste is shaped by a combination of behavioural, social, economic and contextual factors. People may intend to waste less but still face limited time, changing schedules, imperfect meal planning, forgotten leftovers, storage constraints or uncertainty about whether food is still safe or acceptable to eat. This creates an intention-behaviour gap: knowing what we want to do does not necessarily determine what we do.
Behavioural science helps explain part of this gap. Present bias can make immediate convenience more attractive than a future benefit. Consumers also rely on heuristics, or mental shortcuts, when making decisions under uncertainty. Confusion around “best before” dates, for example, can contribute to the premature disposal of food that is still safe to consume. When safety is uncertain, risk perception can make disposal the simplest way to eliminate perceived risk.
This does not mean that awareness is irrelevant. It means that information works best when it is supported by an environment that makes the desired behaviour easier.
From Awareness to Action
The same principle applies beyond households. Businesses cannot prevent losses simply by knowing that waste is costly; they need the infrastructure, data and technologies to anticipate demand, manage inventories and act on surplus. Consumers need practical information and tools that help them use what they already have.
Technology and AI-based tools can support both sides – from post-harvest monitoring and demand forecasting to inventory management and household planning tools. But technology is most effective when it reduces friction and makes prevention easier, rather than simply providing more information.
Awareness can tell us that food loss and waste are a problem. The real challenge is to create the conditions in which preventing them becomes easier than causing them.