Climate-KIC Journey student reduces food waste throughout Europe

Climate-KIC Journey student Joris Depouillon has founded the Food Surplus Entrepreneurs Network (FSE Network) which plans to reduce food waste throughout Europe.
 

The FSE Network is a creative platform which fosters entrepreneurs across Europe to stimulate the business of food waste. The network is implemented as a pan-European platform, but also operates at the regional level with the FSE Hubs. The FSE Network helps local governments to reduce food waste and guides cities and municipalities on how to reduce food waste towards the “Zero Food Waste City.”

The FSE Network is continuously growing
 
As “changemakers who develop bottom-up innovations to decrease food waste,” the FSE Network also favour social entrepreneurship. Within less than 2 years, they managed to deploy hubs in various large European cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels, Budapest, Ljubljana, Vienna and Oslo.

The main two activities are split between specific events organisation for governments and food companies, and consulting services for cities (E.g. helping the introduction of Restopack start-up solutions on food waste in Brussels restaurants in collaboration with the city).

After the success of the Lubjana and Amsterdam editions, the next Food Waste challenge will take place in Leuven by the end of August 2016.

Food waste: a climate challenge
 
A third of global food production goes directly in the trash, which produces 7% of annual emissions of greenhouse gas emissions, that is 3.3 billion tons CO2 equivalent per year. According Food Surplus Entrepreneurs (FSE) Network, “Tackling food waste is a massive and immediate opportunity to reduce the environmental impact and improve the social value of our food system”.