From a circular economy point of view, it is necessary to reduce and manage food losses occurring along the whole supply chain. More sustainable food systems can be and need to be achieved in order to reach the targets defined by the UN’s development agenda for the 21st century.  

Although there is a lot of research done in the food waste sector there are still fundamental issues that need to be faced first like identifying appropriate methods to monitor the food waste amounts along the food supply chain or identifying how different actors can work together in future. Beyond that it is necessary to cope with slowly changing attitudes and behaviours of actors along the food value chain - therefore possible solutions to transfer knowledge and arouse interest need to be tested.

Following food waste topics will be addressed during this conference:

• Food waste legislation
• Food waste management and prevention policy and strategies
• Food waste generation and prevention at the: consumer sector, food service sector, wholesale and retail sector, production sector, primary production
• Food waste recycling
• Distribution of surplus food
• Food waste communication
• Food waste measuring
• Environmental costs and impacts of food waste

The conference will bring together researchers and other interested people from universities, non-university research institutes, relevant actors active along the food supply chain, interest groups and political decision makers​.