HMN 2025: What are the Six strategies identified to help households cut down on food waste

Researchers from the Center for Food Policy at City St George’s, University of London and Scotland’s Rural College have set out six key areas for action that could help households cut down on food waste in a new comment article published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Ranging from increasing the visibility of what we’re throwing away to gaining a better understanding of targets for reducing household food waste, the article provides some important behavioral and systems science insights that could provide potential solutions.

“We waste huge amounts of food at a household level, leading to significant financial costs for individuals, and substantial contributions to CO₂ emissions. But this is a complex problem to address,” says Professor Katy Tapper, lead author of the article and Professor in Psychology at City St George’s.

“We’ve set out six areas that could help reduce food waste, but we also feel it is necessary for governments to measure and prioritize more than just economic growth. When it comes to food, this could be a double win for both health and the planet.”

Food waste remains a huge global problem. It is estimated that 19% of our food is wasted, amounting to more than 1 billion tons every year, with about 60% of this waste generated by households. In the U.K., households generate about 6 million tons of food waste every year, resulting in 16 million tons of CO? emissions and an estimated financial loss of £17 billion. A key target for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is to halve household food waste by 2030, but progress remains slow.

Speaking about why it is proving so hard to reduce household food waste, Dr. Christian Reynolds, Reader in the Center for Food Policy and author of the article, says it’s partly due to the constant need to keep at it.

“Reducing food waste requires daily effort, unlike other changes. Also, it’s hard because you can’t avoid the issue. We all need to eat. And therefore, we inevitably encounter the issue of potential food waste. Besides, it’s hard because we’re trying to reduce something. Although we might view food waste—the physical act of throwing food into the bin—as a behavior, it is a behavior with a very large number of determinants. All these things make it more complicated.”

When compared to the battle against obesity, unlike with food waste, governments have been working to address obesity for several decades. As a result, while both are major problems facing society, it may be that household food waste is harder to change.

“Food waste is much harder to track. For many of us, our food waste goes into a general waste bin, leaving us in the dark about whether we wasted more food this week compared to last week or today compared to yesterday,” says Professor Tapper.

“Another aspect is that our food waste is hidden. Not only do we not know what we are wasting, but we also don’t know what others are wasting or what would be considered an acceptable amount of waste. Compared to obesity, the impacts of food waste are more remote, less personal and less certain. Climate change doesn’t happen the moment we throw food in the bin.”

To help make household food waste reduction easier, the researchers drew on both behavioral and systems science to identify six key areas for action. They are:

1. Visibility—Making food waste more visible in households, e.g., via separate food waste disposal bins collected by councils.
2. Comparison—We need to know what others do, what we’re expected to do and what we’re aiming for.
3. Understanding and opportunity—Improving knowledge about date labels and food storage.
4. Motivation—Explore additional strategies for influencing how people feel about food waste, e.g., the environmental impacts, social justice or financial considerations.
5. Regulation—Addressing profit-driven systems that encourage over-purchasing and consumption.
6. System goals—Urge governments to measure and prioritize more of the things that are important to us, such as health, happiness and sustainability, not just economic growth.

“While addressing food waste remains a complex issue, we hope that the above areas will help people and policymakers find the right way forward to properly address the issue of household food waste,” says Dr. Reynolds.

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