The Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development, Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition, through the general direction of the PAC and with the collaboration of the Valencian Institute of Agrarian Research (IVIA), is promoting a pioneering Action Plan in Spain against food waste in the Valencian Community.
This study, framed in the Bon Profit Plan, aims to advance in the diagnosis of the problem of losses and food waste in our territory and seeks to advance not only in the figures but also in the methodologies to be able to obtain them in the most reliable way .
Specifically, two studies have been launched in 2021 within the framework of the Bon Profit Plan.
The general director of Common Agrarian Policy, Maite Cháfer, explained that “the first of them has been carried out by Dr. Héctor Barco, and is allowing to lay the foundations to establish a rigorous follow-up diagnosis throughout the entire food chain, thus complying with European requirements and those included in the future state law on food waste ”
With this research, which is based on the CNAE (National Classification of Economic Activities) codes, it is being determined which and how many companies exist in the Valencian Community with potential generation of food waste and where they are located.
This list allows setting the actions to be carried out and in which areas and which activities or industrial sectors should be given greater preference.
In this sense, it has been determined that in the entire territory of the Valencian Community there are more than 32,300 companies with the potential to generate food waste, of which 61% belong to the catering sector and consumption outside the home, 27% to the distribution sector, 6% to the production sector and 5.4% to the manufacturing sector.
This distribution by sectors is what really marks the novelty and pioneering nature of this work, since in addition to identifying the sectors of the food chain, the economic activities to which they belong are specified.
All this results in a rigorous diagnosis that allows analysis, writing of recommendations and specific decisions to be made, differentiating territories and economic subsectors.
On the other hand, the second of the studies, promoted by the Bon Profit Plan, consists of using the final deposits, or waste containers, in order to obtain data on the potential food waste generated by the citizens of the Valencian Community.
To do this, samples have been taken from bags deposited in the gray container (mixed urban waste) at three different times this year and in four different towns that are Gandia, Oliva, Enguera and Fuente la Higuera.
Sampling has confirmed that there is a significant part of potentially edible organic matter in the bags that are deposited in the gray container.
This detailed analysis, which has been carried out bag by bag in the recycling plants, has the fundamental objective of establishing in the short or medium term a measurement method that defines with reliable figures the food waste that occurs in the Valencian Community.