Sustainability Best Practices Manual
Creators: name: Otaduy, Deitze
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Food Loss and Waste
subject: Green Public Procurement
subject: Quality of Consumption
subject: Sustainability Best Practices
subject: Food and Agriculture Organization

description: If food loss and waste (FLW) were a country, it would be the third leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions. FLW also burdens waste management systems and exacerbates food insecurity, contributing significantly to the three global crises of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.PRECIOUS, a transdisciplinary alliance of 18 entities from 11 EU countries, believes that reliable data on the environmental impacts of FLW is crucial for accelerating EU progress towards climate targets and reducing environmental impacts (including biodiversity) across the food supply chain. The project´s collective understanding is that the challenge goes beyond measuring the amount of food saved or CO2 emissions. When food is wasted, valuable and limited resources such as water, land use, and energy are lost, while 8.9% of the worldwide population is suffering from hunger according to FAO, therefore, depleting the planet's natural resources. It is critical to broaden our understanding of the issue to transform the food system and raise public awareness that motivates change.PRECIOUS aims to contribute to the transformation of food systems by addressing existing data gaps and developing a unified and openly accessible evaluation framework to quantify the economic, environmental, and social impacts of strategies to reduce FLW, considering potential rebound effects.The project will engage stakeholders from 2 Use Cases (Spain and Greece) and 3 Co-creation and Replication Nodes (Poland, Lithuania, Hungary) to address systemic causes across geographical boundaries. The project aims to induce a fundamental change in attitudes and behaviours towards food consumption and disposal through collaborative efforts and innovative methods, fostering a more just and sustainable EU food system.As indicated in section 2.2-Management figures, of deliverable D8.1, Quality Management Plan, a committee, the Sustainability Committee (SC), has been designed to ensure all partners are involved and planned measures are implemented. The SC formed by UD, as coordinator, and E3M, as an expert in sustainability, will verify that the products, processes, transport, and infrastructure developed by the project result in a net reduction in environmental impacts following the DNSH bases. To collect the best practices to reduce the detrimental environmental and climate impacts that the project may have, the SC has prepared this deliverable, D8.3 - sustainability best practices manual: plan and conclusions on the sustainable practices’ management of the project. It was created at the project's onset to assess the current condition and identify necessary measures.This deliverable outlines the framework and guidelines adopted by the PRECIOUS consortium to ensure sustainability through green procurement practices, environmentally friendly actions, and directives for organizing events, travelling, and managing dissemination and communication materials. These measures align with the European Green Deal, Horizon Europe’s sustainability requirements, and broader global environmental goals. In addition, D8.3 aims to guide the consortium in organizing sustainable events and travel, promote eco-friendly approaches to dissemination and communication, standardize compliance with EU green directives and provide tools to evaluate and enhance sustainability.Moreover, this deliverable will be updated throughout the project, identifying new arising environmental risks and how to prevent and minimize them. At the end of the project, this report will also collect the lessons learnt. Therefore, a set of KPIs (section 5) will be assigned to monitor its proper execution.