Executive summary and key recommendations FUSIONS (Food Use for Social Innovation by Optimising waste preventioN Strategies) is a EU FP7-funded project running from 2012 to 2016, that has the ambition to contribute to achieving a resource efficient Europe by significantly reducing food waste across the supply chain through socially innovative approaches. To achieve this ambitious goal, FUSIONS focuses on the harmonisation of the definitions of food waste, on the assessment of different methodologies and information sources to collect reliable data, on the identification of opportunities to improve food use by developing and evaluating feasibility studies for creating a better understanding of the impact and appropriateness of specific social innovation options. Moreover it contributes to policy making at the EU and national level by identifying and analysing socially innovative solutions for optimised food use, including socio-economic incentives and improved legislation aimed at food safety and hygiene regulation, labelling, food redistribution, and awareness and education campaigns, based on the discussions and findings of the FUSIONS European Multi-stakeholder Platform.Based on the findings of the FUSIONS project, six groups of recommendations concerning policies, practices and effective approaches for food waste prevention and reduction in the EU-28, on both European and Member State (MS) level, are suggested. These recommendations and guidelines can support the development and implementation of a common European policy framework for food waste prevention. The recommendations are listed below. On defining food waste and developing a methodology for its measurement Recommendation 1.1: Establish a common framework for food waste definition.A major finding within FUSIONS entails the establishment of a harmonized definitional framework to measure and monitor food waste across EU-28. The advantages are manifold and deliver a baseline for progress monitoring and identification of hot spots for prevention and reduction measures. It support facts-based policy development as well as serving as a benchmarking instrument demonstrating successful endeavors to tackle food waste on MS and EU level. Therefore, the EC should adopt a common definition of food waste to be used by Member States as a reference for food waste quantification, monitoring and reporting. We recommend using the definition and related definitional framework developed within the FUSIONS project through careful and concise analysis and consultation, resulting in a flexible, encompassing framework, that allows for different perspectives in scoping desirable and undesirable destinations to fractions of food removed from the food supply chain. Recommendation 1.2: Establish a standardised methodology for data collection. The FUSIONS food waste baseline estimate study (published March 2016) identified the gaps and lack of sufficient, high-quality data to measure food waste across EU28. This largely originates from a lack of standardised methodologies used ...
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