Methane mitigation and the WFD: Slashing emissions begins with food waste prevention

As part of the Waste Framework Directive’s (WFD) latest revision, the European Union has for the first time approved legally binding targets for food waste prevention to be met at the national level by the end of 2030: 10% in food processing and manufacturing and 30% in retail, restaurants, food services, and households. It is now up to Member States to transpose these targets into national law in the coming years.

Whether you feel this is a historic decision or an abdication of responsibility, given the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals call for a 50% food waste reduction at the retail and consumer level, depends perhaps on whether you are a glass-half-full or half-empty kind of person…

According to the latest Eurostat data, in 2022, around 132 kg of food waste per inhabitant was generated in the EU. Households generated 54% of all food waste, accounting for 72 kg per inhabitant. The remaining 46% was waste generated upstream in the food supply chain. Looking at household level data, there is a wide range between EU Member States of kgs of food waste per capita due to reporting differences at the national level, which should be improved thanks to the now required standardisation of monitoring and reporting across the EU.

If prioritised and given the attention they require to be met, these targets can have a hugely positive impact on our environment and public budgets. Arguably, most important is the fact that this revision of the WFD is critically important in our battle against climate change. The waste sector is the second largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the EU and contributes to around 27% of all such emissions. Food waste decomposing in landfills is the primary driver of methane emissions from the waste sector. Addressing food waste is therefore essential to cutting methane and meeting the EU’s climate commitments. 

While the EU has taken some steps toward strategies to divert food waste from residual waste—first through the Landfill Directive’s requirement to pre-treat waste before landfilling, and later through the WFD’s mandate for separate collection of bio-waste, which came into force in January 2024—the focus has so far been mainly on the management phase of food waste rather than its prevention. Moreover, in many parts of the EU, these requirements are either largely unmet or weakly implemented, resulting in poorly performing schemes—and continued methane emissions from food-waste decomposing in landfills.

This is why prevention of food waste must be prioritised, and why ZWE welcomes the agreement on the revised WFD targets. Food waste prevention delivers the greatest environmental, climate and economic benefits: it avoids the energy use and related greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing equivalent amounts of new food while also reducing the energy demand and financial costs linked to the collection and treatment of food waste. Importantly, it also addresses the ethical angle of the issue: while vast quantities of edible food are wasted in the EU and other high-income regions, millions of people globally—disproportionately in the Global South—lack access to sufficient and nutritious food. This showcases how our current food system is not only wasteful, but fundamentally unjust.

Regarding the positive climate impact that food waste prevention has, we can look at the fact that methane is a ‘Short-Lived Climate Pollutant’ (SLCP) that warms the planet over 80 times more than CO2 over a 20-year period. Because of this, quick action on methane is absolutely critical, as it can deliver positive results in our fight against climate change in a short period of time. 

Yet, if we look at five of the EU countries that landfill their residual waste the most and are below the required 50% recycling rate for municipal solid waste by 2020—Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, and Malta—we can begin to assess the positive impact that these food waste targets can have on methane emissions.

If we translate this reduction into potential methane emission reductions, based on the premise that this food waste would have otherwise ended up in landfills, without pre-treatment, we can estimate that meeting the 30% food waste prevention targets in these five countries could save just under 1.7 million tonnes C02e (looking over a 20-year period). Even if incinerated rather than landfilled, vast amounts of CO2 will be emitted and required for the process during this same period. Given that in 2022, the entire waste sector in Europe emitted 97 million tonnes CO2e of methane, we can see the significant impact that these food waste prevention targets, even achieved in just five countries, can have on progressing towards our methane and climate targets.

Of course, this calculation is just an estimate. It relies on many variables, most notably whether pre-treatment before landfilling is enforced across these countries, as this is the greatest way to minimise the generation of methane from food waste being landfilled. 

However, we can already see the huge potential for tackling methane emissions via these food waste targets. It’s therefore critical for Member States to take bold steps in the coming months to transpose these legally binding targets into national law and support municipalities, retailers, and food service providers with guidance and economic incentives to lead on delivering progress.