ABOUT WASTLESS (Grant Agreement No. 101084222)
Duration: 1st January 2023 to 31st December 2025
Coordinators: WASTELESS is coordinated by Universidade De Tras-Os-Montes E Alto Douro (UTAD, PT)
Project Partners: 16 beneficiaries, 12 affiliated entities and 1 associated partner from 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey
Source of funding: WASTELESS has received funding from HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-01, topic HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-01-08, and is a HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
AIM
WASTELESS will develop and test innovative tools and methodologies to measure and monitor food loss and waste. A bottom-up approach will starting by defining a harmonised framework and set of standards for the test activities, evaluation of tools and their implementation, and the quality and interoperability of data produced in other frameworks with the aim of making recommendations for sustainable policies and business strategies for a harmonised framework to reduce food loss and waste at the EU level. WASTELESS will also consider innovative processes and streams to valorise unavoidable food loss and waste. A decision support toolbox will be developed to help stakeholders access to the most appropriate methods, digital tools, and solutions for food loss and waste valorisation, not only bringing together existing solutions with those developed by WASTELESS but also allowing better understanding of the environmental and socio-economic impacts associated with implementation of solutions. This will also support data collection and modelling, developed by JRC, to deliver robust, reliable (accurate), and interoperable (comparable) data for future research.
Role of EuroFIR AISBL in WASTELESS
EuroFIR is leading data collection, management, and integration (Task 4.1) considering Open Science and FAIR principles to promote interoperability, management, and governance of WASTELESS data specifically but food loss and waste data in general. These will strengthen reusability and exploitation by user communities. We are also participating in data quality assessment (led by JSI, SI), comparability of data collected and harmonisation (led by SDU, DK), and integration of data into a framework for modelling food loss and waste (also led by SDU, DK), which aim to improve data collection and modelling of food loss and waste.
EuroFIR is also leading supporting exploitation of common EU food loss and waste streams (Task 5.5), which will further develop FoodWasteEXplorer, as tool for user communities seeking to valorise common food waste streams in Europe. We are also participate in Exploitation, communication, dissemination, and food system actor engagement (WP7), supporting creation of a knowledge sharing platform, monitoring communication and dissemination activities, delivering training for food actors and community engagement monitoring, and developing exploitation plans.
Finally, EuroFIR is again responsible for gender equity monitoring and promotion.