Support for reducing food waste in a sustainable way

 Since 2017, Proportion has been promoting the reduction of food waste by supporting projects in institutional and traditional food service settings, as well as by organizing public events, awareness-raising workshops, and training sessions.

Background

Food waste refers to the loss or disposal of food that is still edible. It occurs throughout the supply chain, from agricultural production through storage, processing, distribution, and management, all the way to consumption.

An environmental, ethical, and economic issue, the problem of food waste is one of the major challenges of the century. While each French person throws away an average of 25 kilograms of food each year, this figure rises to 140 kilograms when the entire food chain is taken into account—amounting to 16 billion euros wasted annually.

In Occitanie, as throughout France, it is essential to equip ourselves with the means to combat waste that reflects the flaws, limitations, and sometimes the absurdities of production systems and consumption patterns.

The key challenges in the fight against food waste include combating global hunger and inequality, assisting the most vulnerable, optimizing agriculture, and reducing the environmental impact of food—particularly its climate impact.

In 2019, if food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest polluter in the world—in terms of CO2 emissions—behind China and the United States.

What is Pro-portion?

Pro-portion, a Toulouse-based nonprofit organization under the French Law of 1901, is involved in Environmental and Sustainable Development Education (ESDE) for professionals, students, and residents of Toulouse Métropole, the Haute-Garonne Department, and the Occitanie Region.

Reducing food waste is systematically integrated into a broader approach: a circular economy initiative focused on food waste recovery, local sourcing, and quality products…

The association’s primary objective is to pursue social utility. It is characterized by:

• the goal of contributing to citizenship education, particularly through community education, and to the preservation and development of social bonds;
• contributing to sustainable development in its economic, social, environmental, and participatory dimensions, as well as to the energy transition.

Our support is key to changing behaviors in order to successfully reduce food waste in a sustainable way.

Pro-portion aims to raise awareness and support as many people as possible in changing their habits. We work with all the establishments we support to assess their food waste, identify best practices, address the need for behavioral changes, and gather feedback, all with the goal of helping them cut the amount of food waste produced by their restaurants in half.