Food waste remains a persistent challenge in Europe, despite a decade of growing political attention, public awareness and initiatives to prevent it. Its consequences are ethical and economic, but also environmental: wasted food is estimated to account for around 16% of the greenhouse gas emissions of the EU food system, while placing avoidable pressure on land, water, and energy resources. The problem is particularly concentrated towards the end of the food value chain. Households alone generate more than half of EU food waste, and, together with retail and food services account for around 70% of the total volume.

Yet food waste in the home cannot be understood solely as the result of individual choices. What and how much people buy, consume and ultimately discard is shaped by the environments in which these decisions take place, from supermarkets and other retail settings, to restaurants and canteens and local communities. FOODWISE starts from this broader understanding of consumer behaviour. Rather than placing responsibility for change on individuals alone, the project investigates how these food environments can enable less wasteful and more circular ways of buying and consuming food.

This work comes at an important moment for European food waste policy. Since October 2025, the revised EU Waste Framework Directive requires Member States to reduce food waste by 30% per capita by 2030 across retail and other food distribution, restaurants and food services, and households, compared with the 2021–2023 average. Member States must now translate this common European objective into effective national measures and food waste prevention programmes. FOODWISE contributes to this effort by generating evidence on interventions that can support behavioural and systemic change and by examining how successful approaches can be embedded in policy and practice.

Main objectives

Bringing together 13 partners from six European countries, the team of FOODWISE pursues the following objectives:

• To identify where change can be most effective, building on existing research and experience to map consumption patterns, behavioural drivers and barriers to circular consumption across different European contexts. This evidence provides the basis for selecting and designing targeted interventions rather than starting from scratch.
• To put promising approaches into practice and test what works, co-designing interventions with retailers and food service actors in Portugal and the Czech Republic, working with municipalities to engage citizens, and supporting SMEs in Italy in adopting more circular practices. In this way, FOODWISE examines how the environments in which people buy, consume and manage food can make less wasteful choices easier and more attractive.
• To support the wider uptake of successful approaches, translating project findings into practical tools, replication guidance, governance approaches and policy recommendations. These outputs are intended to help municipalities, businesses and policymakers embed effective food waste prevention and circular consumption practices at local, national and EU levels.

The role of Ecologic Institute

Ecologic Institute leads FOODWISE’s work on policy and governance, with the key objective of translating findings from across the project’s work packages into actionable policy recommendations for more circular food systems and food waste prevention. This work is grounded in continuous exchange with stakeholders, including municipalities, businesses, civil society, researchers, and policymakers. Participatory formats such as roundtables, workshops, and usability assessments ensure that recommendations are informed by real-world experience. By systematically integrating these practical insights with an analysis of the existing political and regulatory context, this work helps identify where current frameworks are effective, where they impose constraints, and how they might be strengthened, adapted, or revised. At the same time, Ecologic Institute situates FOODWISE within the broader EU policy landscape, monitoring relevant developments, engaging with EU institutions and policy networks, and sharing the project’s findings in ongoing initiatives and discussions, such as the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) and the New European Bauhaus (NEB). Insights from these exchanges are in turn fed back into the project, helping to refine its recommendations and ensure their continued relevance in evolving policy contexts.

Ecologic Institute draws on experience from previous food waste projects, including REFRESH and the National Dialogue Forum on Household Food Waste in Germany, to support the translation of FOODWISE’s findings into actionable policy recommendations.