Launch of the Food Loss and Waste Protocol (FLWP) at 3GF 2016

26 May 2016

The aim of the 3GF Summit is to provide a forum to accompany and accelerate delivery of a sub-set of SDGs through transformational public-private partnerships. The 3GF 2016 Summit will focus on the sub-set of SDGs that best align with green growth drivers, e.g. on cities, energy, forests, water, land, sustainable production and consumption, food and hunger, finance.

The unique feature of the 3GF is the way it enables unique and innovative partnerships to be formed, accelerated and scaled. The 3GF 2016 Summit will build on previous work achieved in the innovative and distinctive partnerships that 3GF facilitates. This is driven by knowledge sharing about successful ventures often via new evidence, which in turn sparks further innovation, along with the opportunity for very high levelnetworking giving signals for future direction. The work of 3GF represents an on-going and dynamic process - delivering solutions that can be replicated, speeded upand scaled to truly produce impact.

Excellent examples of this include the Food Loss and Waste Protocol. An international multi-stakeholder partnership devoted to reduce food waste along the value chain from production to consumption enhancing use of valuable resources. The partnership protocol will be launched at the 3GF 2016 Summit in Copenhagen on June 6, 2016, and is titled, “What gets measured can be managed: Presentation of the 3GF partnership that has developed a global standard for measuring food loss and waste in a consistent, credible and transparent manner.”

Purpose

The objectives of the event are to:

Officially launch the FLW Standard into the public domain and encourage its widespread use and adoption among relevant parties. In turn, this will help to speed and scale up the world's response to the issue of food loss and waste.
Validate the FLW Standard by associating it with high-profile institutional and corporate partners that were involved in its development and/or that endorse it as a solution.

Messages

An estimated one-third of all food grown for human consumption is lost or wasted from farm to final mouthful globally.
- Such an enormous level of inefficiency has major economic, social and environmental impacts, causing as high as $940 billion per year in economic losses and exacerbating food insecurity and malnutrition.
- Food that is ultimately lost or wasted consumes a quarter of all water used by agriculture annually, requires cropland area the size of China and generates an estimated 8 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
- Reducing food loss and waste therefore can can alleviate pressure on water, land and the climate, and be an opportunity to feed more.
- However, most countries and companies currently do not know how much and where food is lost or wasted within their borders, operations, or supply chains. In addition, what’s considered “food loss and waste” varies widely. Without a consistent set of definitions or an accounting and reporting framework, it is difficult to compare data within or among entities over time and draw useful conclusions.
- The FLW Standard is a global standard that provides:
  - Requirements and guidance for companies, countries, and other entities to use in quantifying and reporting on the weight of food and/or associated inedible parts removed from the food supply chain.
  - Globally consistent, practical, best practice guidance to users on what to measure and how to measure it.
  - The FLW Protocol and FLW Standard were inspired and incubated by the 3GF platform. They were developed by an international multi-stakeholder partnership that emerged from the 3GF 2012 Summit and the FLW Standard is being officially launched at 3GF 2016.
  - Development of the FLW Standard was financially supported by the Danish International Development Agency (Danida).

Further resources

Articles

Tags: 3GF, Copenhagen, climate, value chains, sustainable lifestyles, private sector, public sector, climate change, FLW standard, protocol, Summit, FLWP