To catalyse essential action towards reducing food waste and achieving SDG 12.3, it's imperative to grasp the extent of food waste. Measuring food waste allows countries to comprehend the magnitude of the issue, thereby revealing the size of the opportunity, while establishing a baseline for tracking progress. The Food Waste Index Report 2021 marked a pivotal moment in understanding global food waste across retail, food service, and household sectors. It unveiled a greater availability of food waste data than anticipated, particularly at the household level, and revealed that per capita household food waste generation was more consistent worldwide than previously thought. The Food Waste Index Report 2024 builds upon its predecessor in three key ways: Firstly, it incorporates vastly expanded data points from around the world, providing a significantly more robust global and national estimates, detailed in Chapter 2 of the main report. Secondly, it expands on the SDG 12.3 food waste measurement methodology introduced in the 2021 report, offering enhanced guidance on measurement across retail, food service, and household sectors. This additional guidance delves into various methodologies, their strengths and limitations, and strategies for prioritising sub-sectors for measurement, as explored in Chapter 3. Lastly, the report transitions from focusing solely on food waste measurement to exploring solutions for food waste reduction. The chapter examines effective approaches to reducing food waste globally, with a spotlight on public-private partnerships in this 2024 report.
The UK’s first large‑scale energy‑from‑waste carbon capture facility marks a pivotal shift in sustainable construction strategy, showing how the built environment can evolve into a carbon sink through integrated low carbon design and advanced circular economy in construction principles. The site demonstrates that sustainable building design is increasingly measured not by ambition but by delivery, bringing net zero Whole Life Carbon strategies from concept into operation.
Data centres by global technology firms are redefining energy‑efficient buildings through modular systems, renewable building materials and resource efficiency in construction. These innovations mirror methods in sustainable building practices, aligning the digital sector with sustainable architecture and eco‑friendly construction. The application of lifecycle assessment and Whole Life Carbon Assessment ensures that embodied carbon in materials and the carbon footprint of construction are verified across every stage of the asset’s building lifecycle performance.
Industry analysts emphasise that achieving carbon neutral construction depends on a deeper understanding of life cycle cost and life cycle thinking in construction. Incremental gains are giving way to systematic approaches that use environmental product declarations (EPDs), sustainable material specification and low embodied carbon materials to lower the environmental impact of construction. Circular construction strategies and end‑of‑life reuse in construction are emerging as essential components of environmental sustainability in construction, supporting decarbonising the built environment at scale.
The transition from pilot projects to mainstream adoption is redefining economic models where the former green premium of net zero carbon buildings and low carbon building materials becomes standard. As BREEAM and BREEAM v7 benchmarks reshape certification frameworks, whole life carbon evaluation is becoming central to sustainable urban development, driving a systemic reduction in the carbon footprint of global infrastructure and signalling that true progress in green construction is now underway.
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