Food Giants Join Latin America, Caribbean Anti-Waste Campaign

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has convinced some of the world’s leading food companies to adopt its Latin American and Caribbean campaign against regional food loss and waste.

RELATED: 

Nestle, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo Among Top Culprits in Plastic Pollution

United behind the hashtag #SinDesperdicio (#WithoutWaste), producers such as Coca-Cola Company, Nestle, Grupo Bimbo, Oxxo and Dow Chemical will be working together on the project to create innovative projects, promote public policies, educational forums, and information on responsible consumer habits.

Considering that companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo have been identified by campaigners in a “brand audit” as the most problematic companies when it comes to plastic waste, their efforts to reverse the path of food waste has been well received.

However, IDB reports show that a total of 30 percent of the food goes to waste while over 60 percent of food is destroyed during the stages of production, storage, and transportation. An additional 28 percent is thrown away on arriving to the consumer’s home.

Consequently, 18 percent of all agriculture sectors and 19 percent of fertilizers go to waste and food that is never consumed.

“It is a scandal to see the food that is wasted. These are the numbers that we cannot allow,” IDB vice president, Julie Katzman said.

“Meeting these goals will demand effort from all of us. This associates platform is a starting point to reduce food losses and waste, a fundamental agenda to achieve our objective of improving lives in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Katzman said.

Coca-Cola vice president of communication and public affairs, Olga Reyes, said: “We are proud to be making this effort to reduce food loss in Latin America. This is a commitment where we all gain: communities gain, consumers gain, producers gain, and most of all, the environment gains. This will become part of the legacy we leave to the generations to come.”

Katzman, explained that the project’s goal is to followed the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and halve the global per capita food waste by 2030.