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News | 2016-12-09

Food Waste Forum attracted great attention in China

Over 100 professionals from the government, business community, science institutions, non-governmental organizations and international organizations gathered in Beijing for the Food Waste Forum – an initiative to promote the knowledge-sharing regarding global measurement and reduction of food loss and waste. IVL China is the leading organizer of the forum.

With the rapid economic development, food waste has become a growing environmental problem in Asia. By estimation, the largest increase of food waste in Asia will be from 278 million to 416 million ton per year, if no effective measures are taken. Food lost throughout the food supply and consumption chain is a big waste not only for food, but also for water, energy and land resources. This becomes a burden to the environment, and also aggravated the food and nutrition security problems, especially for poor and marginalized groups. IVL China, working together with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), All-China Environment Federation (ACEF), the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), organized the food waste forum in Beijing. The Forum was composed of four different sessions: the Key Note Presentations; the Panel on Food Industry and Consumer Level; the Panel on Food Waste Reduce, Reuse and Recycle; and the Panel on Multi-stakeholder Actions. At the end of the day student representatives from the Second High School at the Beijing Normal University spoke of “We live, we learn we change” and introduced their project of food waste in schools canteen, which was enthusiastically greeted by the participants.

Åsa Stenmarck, Head of the Waste Group at IVL, gave a presentation on the situation of food waste in Sweden. She mentioned that data comparison and analysis could be used for specific targeting of food wasted by consumers, retailers, the catering industry and others. – It could help us recall what our first priorities are as food loss and waste occurs along the entire agricultural value chain, she said. The forum also served as the kick-off meeting for the EU-Horizon 2020 project Refresh in China. Mr. Xu Jie, Vice Director of International Cooperation Department of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, was invited for the opening speech at the forum. Participants from more than 20 different media institutes and organizations attended the forum, including the Beijing TV station. The event was widely reported in different channels and related news stories where viewed over 1 million times. The forum is funded by the Swedish Government and Stockholm Environment Institute. It is also supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the UN Theme Group on Climate Change and Environment, and the EU-project Refresh. For more information regarding the Food Waste Forum, please contact: Ms Yao Juanjuan, juanjuan.yao@ivl.se, phone +86 (0)10-6513 1381 For more information regarding Refresh, please contact: Åsa Stenmarck, asa.stenmarck@ivl.se, phone +46 (0)10-788 6566  

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