On 26 August 2026, the SDG Local Action series hosted a webinar on How are cities preventing food waste?
Every year, the world wastes around 1 billion tonnes of food in shops, restaurants and homes, according to UNEP’s Food Waste Index Report. Food loss and waste also cause an estimated 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, many families cannot afford enough good food. Cities are where most food is bought, eaten and thrown away, so they are well placed to act. Reducing food waste is also a smart investment: estimates shared during the webinar show a return of about 8 US dollars for every dollar invested in cities.
Local governments are at taking the issue of food wast seriously. The webinar counted with the experiences of two cities: Medellin (Colombia) presented how to connect food donors with organizations that support families facing hunger, using a digital platform and fast, small-scale deliveries. Budapest (Hungary) presented its plan for a city-run facility that will turn imperfect fruits and vegetables into ingredients for meals in schools and elderly homes. The session was moderated by Fernanda Romero, Waste Policy Lead at the UNEP office in Brazil.
UNEP supports this work through the Food Waste Breakthrough, launched at COP30 in Brazil together with the UN Climate High-Level Champions. The initiative aims to halve food waste in line with SDG target 12.3, keep food out of landfills and cut methane emissions.
The video recording of the webinar is available on our YouTube channel in English, Spanish and French.
Medellin: connecting surplus food with families facing hunger
Over the years, Medellin has made strong social and economic progress, but food insecurity remains a persistent challenge. About 452,000 people are facing food insecurity, and approximately 180,000 people currently experiencing food insecurity are not reached through the District’s existing institutional programs and services. At the same time, food that is still good to eat doesn’t reach the people who need it. In Colombia, approximately 35% of food is lost or wasted, equivalent to 9.7 million tonnes per year. Of this, about 62% is fruits and vegetables (6.1 million tonnes).
Behind these numbers are hard daily choices. Families buy cheaper, lower-quality food or eat less. Some children go to school without breakfast. Some families eat only two meals a day, and often a parent skips meals so the children can eat. Many households also cut back on food to pay for other basic needs, such as housing or health care.
The city government knew it could not solve this alone. So it created the Medellín Zero Hunger Alliance (Alianza Medellín Cero Hambre), which brings together public resources, private companies and social organisations around one shared goal, in the words of the city’s mayor: that no family in Medellín goes to bed hungry.
- The program’s stated objective is that, by 2027, at least 90,000 people who currently do not receive any food assistance will have access to adequate nutrition.
- By the end of the 2025 pilot, the model had collected 10,076 kg of food, all of which consisted of agricultural surplus: 5,762 kg of fruits and vegetables and 4,314 kg of roots, tubers and plantains, exceeding the initial target of 10 tonnes.
The alliance works through three lines:
- Institutional line: city programmes such as school meals, food assistance for families, nutrition recovery for children under five, early childhood care, and meals and support for older people in community centres.
- Solidarity line: donations from companies and individuals fund food packages for families.
- Social innovation line: reorganization on how food is collected, managed and delivered before it goes to waste. This is where the new project sits.
Finding the gap
In the second half of 2025, Medellin ran a pilot to test a new model of food distribution. In the first place, the city looked at what was the population in need that was not reach by the existing system. The exercise identified 150,000 people facing food insecurity who receive no food support at all. Most of them were women, living in the poorest neighborhoods and depending on subsidized health care. About 20% were victims of Colombia’s armed conflict.
The city also mapped where food is available versus the districts that are not receiving enough support. This showed a clear gap. Food banks already managed large donations, such as truckloads of food from wholesalers. The problem is mostly concentrated in small and medium donations: few boxes from a supermarket, restaurants or corner shops. If no one picked the supplies quickly, they are thrown away. Medellín’s answer has focused on micro-logistics: moving small amounts of food over short distances, and fast.
The collected food includes not only items close to their expiry date, but also food that is hard to sell, like a very large carrot or a very small onion, which shoppers usually reject.
How the model works
The model runs on EatCloud, a digital platform that matches food on offer with organizations that need it:
- A potential donor, such as a supermarket, restaurant or small shop, posts on the platform what food is available and where.
- The platform sends an alert to nearby organizations, such as foundations and food banks.
- An organization claims the donation and receives a pickup code.
- Volunteers collect the food using trucks or small motorbikes and deliver it to people who need it.
The platform includes a simple but important rule: each organization can only claim as much food as the people it serves can eat in time.
Before the platform, everything was done by hand, with donors and receivers contacting each other directly. Now the platform speeds up pickups and ensures the food goes to people who will actually use it.
What Medellin learned
- There is real potential to recover more food. In the pilot, the city identified 15 potential receiving organizations and 3 donors.
- Connections create value. The platform quickly brings supply and demand together.
- Distance matters. Reducing the distance between donors and receivers improves the chances of rescuing small amounts of food.
- Not everything worked. Processing food, for example into fruit pulp or pickles, cost more in logistics than it returned, so the city will not continue with it. There were also delays in deliveries, in the use of pickup codes, and in how people arrived to collect donations. The next phase will address these barriers.
- Training never stops. Staff change often, both at donor businesses and at receiving organizations, so the city must keep training people to use the platform.
Next steps
Based on what the city has learned, Medellín plans to go ahead with the following actions:
- Relaunch the platform and make it more efficient, moving more food through micro-logistics.
- Bring in more donors by removing donation barriers, reaching new types of food businesses, and keeping donors engaged over time.
- Improve how the city finds and reaches families facing food insecurity.
The goal is simple: recover more food, in less time, at a lower cost, with more organizations connected and more families benefiting from the system. Medellín’s experience shows that the main problem is often not a lack of food, but a lack of connection between offer and demmand.
Budapest: turning imperfect produce into meals for schools and elderly homes
Budapest has fewer than 1.7 million residents, but it plays a central role in Hungary’s food system, a country of 9.5 million people. By law, the Municipality of Budapest runs many food-related public services, including meals in schools and social care institutions, as well as some of the city’s markets and market halls.
In the last years, the city has identified two linked problems:
- Food prices have risen sharply, well above the European Union average. This has put pressure on households, disproportionally affecting children and the elderly.
- Large amounts of good fruit and vegetables are thrown away because they are crooked or too small to meet market standards. The Budapest wholesale market alone is estimated to produce 500 to 600 tonnes of fruit and vegetable waste each year. Some produce never even reaches the market: farmers see it as second-class and do not bother to transport it, so it becomes an instant loss.
This led to an idea: a city-run facility that uses second-class produce to make ingredients for public meals.
Testing the idea first
Before moving forward, the city wanted to confirm its main assumptions. It worked directly with the people involved: farmers, traders, parents, children and older people who receive meals through public catering. The team:
- Ran surveys and in-person conversations at the Budapest wholesale market.
- Held surveys and focus groups with parents.
- Organized a cooking and tasting session to prepare healthy meals with second-class produce.
In total, around 1,000 people took part of the exercise.
The results were clear:
- The supply of food is there. Farmers and traders confirmed that surplus and imperfect produce are available, and they are interested in new ways to sell it.
- There is demand. Parents and students want more fresh fruit and vegetables in school and nursery meals.
- It makes economic sense. Second-class and surplus produce can be bought for about 35-40% less than top-quality produce.
- The conclusion: the problem is not a lack of food. What is missing is the link, the infrastructure and the coordination needed to connect surplus produce with the demand from public kitchens.
How the Budapest Food Hub will work
The answer is the newly designed Budapest Food Hub. The city will coordinate the entire chain: farmers and markets supply a processing facility, and the facility supplies school kitchens, elderly homes, and other public institutions. The facility will meet modern food safety standards and produce semi-finished and ready-to-cook products, such as washed and cut vegetables, adapted to what public kitchens need.
The expected benefits include:
- Better meals, with more fresh fruit and vegetables for children and older people.
- Time and cost savings for kitchens, since ingredients arrive ready to cook at a price similar to fresh produce.
- More stable income for farmers and traders, who gain a reliable buyer.
- Less food waste.
- Possible jobs at the facility for people with reduced work capacity are an option the city is still exploring.
This will be Hungary´s first example of a city taking this kind of role in the food market to supply public meals.
Measuring results and bringing farmers on board
The city is still developing how to measure success. The first target is to reach about 10,000 schoolchildren and elderly home residents, growing to about 20,000 in the first years of the facility. Budapest also plans to track how its purchases affect food waste at the wholesale market, how satisfied children are with their meals, and whether farmers and traders benefit financially from the partnership.
Establishing a supportive ecosystem and a resilient, uninterrupted supply chain will be challenging, so the team plans to go to the wholesale market, talk to farmers face-to-face, explain the benefits honestly, and show how both sides can gain. Word has already started to spread from the testing phase.
The road ahead includes construction, test runs and contracts with suppliers and buyers.
Two cities, one goal
Medellín and Budapest started from different places. Medellín focuses on rescuing small donations and getting them quickly to families facing hunger. Budapest focuses on turning imperfect produce into ingredients for public meals. Yet both reached the same conclusion: the food is there, and what is missing is the connection between those who have it and those who need it. In both cases, the city steps in as the coordinator, bringing together producers, businesses, social organizations and public services.