With the press of a button, Queen Máxima officially opened the seventh edition of Waste-Free Week yesterday at Cultuur Haven Veghel.
The national campaign, running from 8 to 14 September and coordinated by the Netherlands Nutrition Centre and Stichting Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling (Together Against Food Waste Foundation), is this year focused on clarifying food date labels. The confusion between "best before" (THT) and "use by" (TGT) still leads many consumers to throw away perfectly good food unnecessarily.
Recent research shows that the Dutch continue to structurally underestimate their food waste. On average, each person discards 33 kilos of food per year, which amounts to 23 million meals every week. Strikingly, as many as 81 percent of consumers believe they waste less than average, while the numbers tell a different story. Expiration dates in particular appear to be a stumbling block: eight percent of consumers routinely throw away products past their THT date, even if they are still perfectly edible.
Throughout Waste-Free Week, attention is drawn nationwide to this issue. Supermarkets, municipalities, educational institutions and businesses organize activities that help consumers become more conscious about their food. Special in-store promotions are launched, workshops and waste-free dinners are held, and schools dedicate lessons to the topic. Handy tools are also being introduced, such as fridge stickers and tapes that indicate which products should be used first.
The goal of the campaign is clear: to halve food waste in the Netherlands by 2030. Achieving this requires cooperation between consumers, government, businesses and civil society organizations. According to the organizers, real change begins with awareness. Knowing what you throw away, and why, is the first step in preventing waste.
For partners like Looop, Waste-Free Week aligns seamlessly with daily practice. By giving co-products from the food industry a new purpose as valuable raw materials, Looop demonstrates how circular solutions contribute to a future without waste. The campaign therefore provides not only inspiration but also tangible tools to collectively build a circular food system.
