The Circular Economy and Food Waste

🗑️ How does foodwaste reduction align with the principles of a circulareconomy? It's more than just recycling leftover food – it's designing waste out of our food system to prevent surplus in the first place.

Many people promoting a "circular economy" may wonder where food waste fits in. The circular economy advocates for the transformation of the world’s current systems of waste production from linear processes that permanently remove precious resources from the environment – through various disposal methods such as dumping or landfilling – to a cyclical model in which resources are designed, used, and recaptured without producing any waste. The good news is that addressing food waste is promoting a circular economy.

Unlike plastics, textiles, precious metals, and other materials which last longer than a product’s standard use phase or lifetime, food is intended to be completely consumed. Therefore, as much as possible, circular economy principles dictate a focus on preventing food from becoming waste in the first place. For food that is unavoidably lost from the human consumption chain, we should then treat food like these other materials whose “waste” streams represent valuable resources that are full of potential for circular transformation.

By Jeffrey Costantino


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