Sit down to a breakfast buffet in a nice hotel, and youre faced with a vision of opulence vats of steaming scrambled eggs, towers of fresh-baked pastries, pancakes and potatoes kept hot until the last guest leaves. But the flip side of this abundance is what happens to the food that isnt eaten it moves from the table to the trash, and eventually into methane-generating landfills.
Globally, we waste around 1 billion tonnes of food per year. Sixty per cent of this waste happens within households, but the rest occurs in the food service industry including hotels and restaurants and the retail sector. Not only does this waste the resources that go into food production; food rotting in landfills also generates 14 per cent of the worlds methane, a powerful greenhouse gas with an outsized impact on warming the planet.
Much of this waste is caused by systemic inefficiencies in food production, distribution and disposal. Thats why the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is working with local governments and private sector players around the world to deliver on the targets of the Food Waste Breakthrough launched in 2025 at COP30 which aims to halve food waste by 2030 and cut global methane emissions by up to 7 per cent. Some of the most innovative and ambitious countries, cities and companies have joined as Food Waste Breakthrough contributors, showcasing their achievements and commitments to reducing food waste, keeping food out of landfills and saving the resources we need to build more sustainable food systems.
Businesses take on the food waste challenge
In 2022, the food service sector measured 290 million tonnes of food waste, 28 per cent of the total amount of food wasted. But since measuring waste within hotels and restaurants is not widespread in most parts of the world, the real figure is thought to be much higher.
One business that has integrated food waste measurement and reduction in its operations is the Hilton hotel chain, whose Green Ramadan initiative part of UNEPs Recipe of Change campaign has been rolled out across 45 hotels in 14 countries. By training hotel staff to closely monitor which items are left uneaten on guests plates, serving smaller portions, and swapping lavish buffets for set menus, the month-long campaign achieved a 26 per cent reduction in post-consumer plate waste in 2025 saving more than 2.6 tonnes of food.
One of the most important things food businesses can do to tackle food waste is to measure and publicly report food waste data,says Clementine OConnor, UNEPs Sustainable Food Systems Programme Management Officer. Food waste is often overlooked as an inevitable cost of doing business, but data a key pillar of the Food Waste Breakthrough helps make it visible and therefore actionable. Public reporting further demonstrates the food waste reductions that are achievable in each sector and motivates industries to improve performance, says OConnor.
The Food Waste Breakthrough also includes a number of businesses in the food retail sector, which accounts for around 12 per cent of global food waste. Retailers are stepping up to take responsibility for helping their customers reduce food waste at home, says OConnor. Supermarkets are immersive environments, and they have lots of ways to raise awareness amongst their customers, from shelf-talkers and on-pack QR codes to receipts and in-store radio.
Walmart in the United States has taken advantage of this reach through a pilot initiative called Save Some Dough, in partnership with The Consumer Goods Forums Coalition of Action on Food Waste. Tested across 120 stores, the approach uses improved merchandising to encourage customers to purchase baked goods nearing their expiry date, marking them with appealing labels and prominently displaying them on a dedicated shelf. Importantly, this is coupled with messaging to help customers use perishable foods effectively and cut food waste at home. The pilot showed improved sales of these items, with less food sent to landfills.
Japanese retailer FamilyMart has adopted an emotional approach to selling its near-expiry goods, labelling them with a teary eyed sticker meant to overcome the stigma associated with discounted food. By invoking empathy and making customers feel their purchase was an act of kindness, the company managed to boost sales of these items by five percentage points, a projected annual reduction of 3,000 tonnes of wasted food.
Supermarkets have an outsized impact on food waste, both in the home and across their supply chains, notes OConnor. We are working with retailers to communicate the business case for helping their customers waste less food, beyond sustainability departments to core operations. Food waste reduction builds trust and trust drives customer loyalty and frequency. Customers who feel a retailer helps them save money and live better buy more over time, across more categories."
Cities stepping up
The public sector is also an important part of the food waste equation, particularly at the city level where education, procurement and waste collection can all contribute to keeping food out of landfills. At the city level you need a policy framework, you need a food waste prevention plan, says Fernanda Romero, Waste Policy Lead at UNEPs Brazil Office. There are lots of different teams that need to come together to make this work.
New York Citys Food and Climate Strategy is one example of such a framework. The strategy includes reducing citywide and per-capita food waste by 50 per cent by 2030 a target aligned with SDG 12.3 and supporting the redistribution and consumption of surplus food. New York also aims to divert 100 per cent of its food waste from landfills, which is crucial for reducing methane emissions.
To get food waste out of landfills you need separate collections of food waste from households, which as an initial shift can be expensive and challenging, Romero points out. But cities like New York have found a way to collect that food waste so that something productive can be done with it.
The city runs a residential curbside collection programme for food waste and has put in place food waste separation requirements for businesses. In 2024, the residential programme alone diverted nearly 130,000 tonnes of food waste from landfills, sending it instead to municipal facilities for composting, anaerobic digestion and biogas production. The compost generated is distributed for free to public parks, residents and community associations.
Bangkok has introduced a financial incentive for its residents to separate their food waste, tripling the waste fee for households who dont opt in to the app-based collection scheme. It isn't a huge amount of money, but it's enough to make people want to download the app and to show that they're actually doing something, that they are part of the solution, says Romero.
Other cities have adopted systems to keep food from being thrown away to begin with. Because consumer confusion around food expiration dates are a big driver of waste, Nagoya, Japan, is preventing still-edible food from being discarded by shifting some of its labeling from use by to best before (best before indicates that although the color, texture and taste of food might not be optimal after the given date, the food is likely still safe to consume). Meanwhile the city of Yokohama has installed SDG lockers in metro stations, selling leftover baked goods at a discount to busy commuters who dont have time to visit a bakery during its opening hours.
There are lots of ways a city can reach people putting messaging on the sides of bins, running community center cooking workshops, or working with the retail sector, says Romero. Sometimes you just need that little push to trigger behavior change, to help put that habit in place.
Zero Waste Day 2026, held annually on 30 March, is focused on food waste. Jointly facilitated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), Zero Waste Day calls on people, governments and organizations around the world to take concrete action to prevent waste, advance circular solutions and strengthen zero-waste food systems.
As the worlds leading environmental authority, UNEP works to prevent food waste and mitigate methane emissions by adapting and scaling proven solutions, as well as promoting global collaboration on the topic.At COP30 in Belm, Brazil, UNEP and its partners launched the Food Waste Breakthrough an initiative to halve food waste by 2030, cutting methane emissions by up to 7 per cent as part of efforts to slow climate change.
