“BCN Comparteix El Menjar” [Barcelona Shares Its Food], A Food Waste Reduction Model of HORECA Sector in Barcelona

Working against food waste is key to reduce hunger and to improve food sustainability. One third of the edible parts of the foods produced for human consumption are wasted, what represents 1.300 millions of tonnes per year worldwide. From those, 11 millions of tones come from food services, such as hotels, restaurants and caterings, sector in Europe. At the same time, the current economic crisis has worsened the living conditions of countries like Spain; increasing the amount of people at risk of suffering from food insecurity. For instance, 29,2% of Spanish population (13.4 millions of people) was living at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2015. Since 2012, the NGO Nutrició Sense Fronteres (NSF) is working in an innovative project named “BCN Comparteix el menjar” [Barcelona Shares its Food] aiming to reduce food waste among the HORECA (Hotels, Restaurants and Caterings) sector in Barcelona. This article describes the methodology of a food waste recovery and distribution system, together with its main protocol steps and its collaborators, which are20 4 and 5 star hotels, 8 caterings and 10 food companies. Results from this project show that more than 80524 kg of food and 47519 litres of water have been recovered and distributed from January 2013 until December 2015. All the recovered food and water were distributed among17 social centres, which together benefit 73.669 people and 15.862 families living at risk of poverty and social exclusion. *Corresponding author: Homs Bassedas C, ONG Nutrició Sense Fronteres (NSF), C/ Rocafort 242, bis, 3rd floor 08029, Barcelona, E-mail: [email protected] http://www.nutricionsinfronteras.org/; [email protected] [email protected]; [email protected] Citation: Clara, H.S., et al. “BCN Comparteix El Menjar” [Barcelona Shares Its Food], A Food Waste Reduction Model of HORECA Sector in Barcelona. (2016) J Environ Health Sci 2(3): 14. “BCN Comparteix El Menjar” [Barcelona Shares Its Food], A Food Waste Reduction Model of HORECA Sector in Barcelona Vidal Ibáñez M1, Homs Bassedas C1*, Vidal Monès B1, Milà-Villarroel R1,2, Serra-Majem, LL1,3 Received date: July 26, 2016 Accepted date: September 30, 2016 Published date: October 04, 2016 DOI: 10.15436/2378-6841.16.1023 Some of the most relevant data show that about one third of edible foods for human consumption are wasted, representing 1.300 millions of tonnes per year worldwide. From these, 88 million tonnes of food being in good conditions come from the European Union (EU) (FAO, 2012). Household (47 million tones ± 4 million tons) and processing (17 million tones ± 13 million tons) are the sectors with the biggest contribution to food waste. These two sectors account for the 72% of EU food waste. Of the remaining 28 percent of food waste 11 million tons (12%) comes from food service, 9 million tons (10%) comes from primary production and 5 million tons (5%) comes from wholesale and retail. The mean food waste per inhabitant is of 173 kg in EU (Stenmarck & Jensen, 2016).