Stricter EU Requirements on Food Waste – PLENTY can Give Sweden a Head Start

One third of the food we produce never ends up in anyone’s stomach. The EU has therefore, for the first time, introduced binding targets to reduce food waste and is turning its attention to how these targets are to be achieved by 2030. To succeed, the many actors in the food system need to collaborate, and cooperation is also required between research, technology, the public sector, and industry. This is where the development centre PLENTY can play an important role.

The revised Waste Framework Directive, which entered into force in October 2025, has shifted the issue from political ambition to binding requirements. By 2030, EU member states must reduce food waste by 10 percent in food processing and manufacturing, and by 30 percent per capita in retail and consumption. As early as 2027, the Commission will review progress. At that point, attention will turn to food waste and food losses in primary production, which may influence how the regulatory framework develops after 2030.

The EU throws away more food than it imports

According to Eurostat, the EU generated 58.2 million tonnes of food waste in 2023, equivalent to around 130 kilograms per person. But using a broader definition of food waste, which also includes losses in primary production, the amount is estimated at 153.5 million tonnes per year. That is more than the nearly 138 million tonnes of agricultural products that the EU imported from countries outside the Union in 2021. Agriculture accounts for around one third of global greenhouse gas emissions and around 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals. The food system is also one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss and deforestation worldwide. Despite food’s major environmental impact, we are using far less than what we produce, while many countries have set targets to increase domestic food production.

Seeing that one third of all food produced never reaches anyone’s stomach is a clear sign of systemic failure. The food system needs to make better use of residual streams, surplus products, and by-products.

– Madeleine Linins Mörner, Programme Manager for Future Food at Axfoundation.

PLENTY – a test and development environment for circular solutions

In a system as complex as the food system, with many actors and multiple stages, collaboration is essential. PLENTY – Centre for Circular and Symbiotic Food Supply – is a development centre for circular food systems that brings together companies, researchers, and public actors to map, develop, test, and evaluate solutions related to raw material use, side streams, and residual flows in the food chain. This could give Sweden a head start in relation to the EU’s stricter requirements.

PLENTY explores, among other things, how surplus, by-products, and residual streams can be used in new processes, products, or forms of collaboration between different actors. Expected outcomes include biofertilisers, biological crop protection products, feed, food ingredients, and food products. The solutions are tested in practice with different demonstrators before being used on a larger scale. In this way, PLENTY serves as an environment for applied development, where technical, social, organisational, and business-related issues can be tested at an early stage.

It is in environments like PLENTY that it becomes possible to discover what actually works, and what gets stuck in regulations, division of responsibilities, or old ways of working.

– Madeleine Linins Mörner, Programme Manager for Future Food at Axfoundation.

What the EU’s new requirements mean for Sweden

The revised Waste Framework Directive not only introduces requirements for measurement and reporting, but also requires member states to adapt their national food waste prevention programmes, designate responsible authorities, and take action throughout the food chain.

How Sweden chooses to implement and monitor the new national targets will matter for Swedish municipalities, regions, public meal services, and companies.

PLENTY can serve as a place where actors not only discuss new ways of working, but also test them together. This makes it possible to translate the EU’s targets into concrete methods, collaborations, and ways of working that can be used in the operations where food waste actually occurs, while also connecting actors across the entire food chain.

– Francisco Vilaplana, Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Director of PLENTY.