(1)

Directive 2008/98/EC lays down an obligation for Member States to include food waste prevention into their waste prevention programmes and to monitor and assess the implementation of their food waste prevention measures by measuring the levels of food waste on the basis of a common methodology. The Commission is to establish that common methodology and set out minimum quality requirements for the uniform measurement of levels of food waste on the basis of the outcome of the work of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste.

(2)

The definition of ‘food’ laid down in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council (2) encompasses food as a whole, along the entire food supply chain from production until consumption. Food also includes inedible parts, where those were not separated from the edible parts when the food was produced, such as bones attached to meat destined for human consumption. Hence, food waste can comprise items which include parts of food intended to be ingested and parts of food not intended to be ingested.

(3)

Food waste does not include losses at stages of the food supply chain where certain products have not yet become food as defined in Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, such as edible plants which have not been harvested. In addition, it does not include by-products from the production of food that fulfil the criteria set out in Article 5(1) of Directive 2008/98/EC, since such by-products are not waste.

(4)

Food waste is to be prevented and reduced along the whole food supply chain. As the types of food waste and the factors contributing to the generation of food waste differ significantly between the different stages of the food supply chain, food waste should be measured separately for each stage.

(5)

The attribution of food waste to the different stages of the food supply chain should be carried out in accordance with the common statistical classification of economic activities in the Union established by Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) as ‘NACE Revision 2’. In the absence of a pertinent NACE Rev. 2 classification, the attribution to ‘households’ should be carried out by reference to point 1.2 of Section 8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 2150/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council (4).

(6)

While Commission Decision 2000/532/EC (5) establishing a European List of Waste does not always allow for a precise identification of food waste, it can provide guidance for national authorities in the context of measurement of food waste.

(7)

Agricultural material referred to in Article 2(1)(f) of Directive 2008/98/EC and animal by-products referred to in Article 2(2)(b) of Directive 2008/98/EC are excluded from the scope of that Directive and should therefore not be measured as food waste.

(8)

In order for the methodology to be practically applicable and in order for the burden resulting from monitoring to be proportional and reasonable, some waste streams, which are not expected to include food waste or include food waste in negligible amounts, should not be measured as food waste.

(9)

To improve the precision of the measurement of food waste, non-food materials mixed together with food waste (e.g. soil or packaging) should be excluded from the mass of the food waste to the extent possible.

(10)

There are several types of food, which are usually discarded as or with wastewater, such as bottled drinking and mineral water, beverages and other liquids. There are currently no methods for measuring such waste which would ensure sufficient levels of confidence and comparability of reported data. Therefore, such types of food should not be measured as food waste. However, MS should have the possibility to report information on these types of food on a voluntary basis.

(11)

While substances that are destined for use as feed materials referred to in Article 2(2)(e) of Directive 2008/98/EC are excluded from the scope of that Directive and should therefore not be measured as food waste, information on food originally intended for human consumption and then directed to animal feed (including former foodstuffs as defined in point 3 of Part A of the Annex to Commission Regulation (EU) No 68/2013 (6) is important for the understanding of material flows related to food and may be useful in planning a targeted food waste prevention policy. For this reason Member States should have the possibility to report this information in a uniform manner on a voluntary basis.

(12)

To enable a precise indication of the amounts of food waste generated at each stage of the food supply chain, Member States should carry out an in-depth measurement of the amounts of food waste. Such in-depth measurement should be conducted on a regular basis for each stage of the food supply chain and at least once every four years.

(13)

Pursuant to Article 37(3) of Directive 2008/98/EC, Member States are to report amounts of food waste on a yearly basis. In order to ensure proportionality and to reduce administrative burden, Member States should be provided with a range of methods for the measurement of food waste for the purposes of those yearly reports, including the existing analyses of food waste generation, new dedicated studies on food waste as well as data collected for waste statistics or reporting obligations on waste and other socioeconomic data, or a combination of those options. As far as possible, established sources of data such as the European statistical system, should be used.

(14)

In order to ensure uniform monitoring of material flows in the food supply chain in the context of a targeted food waste prevention policy, it should be ensured that Member States which decide to measure food waste in more detail or to extend the coverage of the measurement into related material flows, can do so in a uniform way.

(15)

In order to allow for verification of reported data and improvement of measurement methods and in order to ensure the comparability of those methods, Member States should provide additional information linked to the methods of measurement and the quality of the collected data,

(a)

amounts of food waste regarded as composed of parts of food intended to be ingested by humans;

(b)

amounts of food waste drained as or with wastewaters;

(c)

amounts of food which has been redistributed for human consumption as referred to in Article 9(1)(h) of Directive 2008/98/EC;

(d)

amounts of food no longer intended for human consumption placed on the market for transformation into feed by a feed business operator as defined in Article 3(6) of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002;

(e)

former foodstuffs as defined in point 3 of Part A of the Annex to Regulation (EU) No 68/2013.