Sustainable lifestyles and food systems are deeply interconnected, as daily individual choices can make a significant impact on global food production and consumption patterns. Yet, Member States and other stakeholders, including in the private sector, have a key role to play to set the proper enabling conditions to promote sustainable lifestyles.
UNEP’s work in this area advocates for integrated approaches that address the entire value chain and empower consumers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles, ensuring food systems are resilient, equitable, and environmentally sustainable. UNEP promotes a shift to sustainable food systems through responsible consumption habits, food loss and waste reduction, and dietary shifts to plant-based diets and local foods. Sustainable food systems require collaboration across sectors, from producers to consumers, to minimize resource use, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote biodiversity, solving the polycrisis we face—linking climate action, biodiversity protection, pollution control, and social equity. By encouraging behavior change at the consumer and hospitality level, we can move closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 of sustainable consumption and production patterns.
This is reaffirmed by the UNEA 6 2024 Resolution on promoting sustainable lifestyles, which calls for ensuring that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness, as well as the necessary enabling conditions, for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature.
According to the UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024, more than 35% of food waste is generated at the retail and food service stages. Engaging stakeholders in the retail and hospitality sectors can significantly help achieve food waste reduction along the food supply chain and influence behavioral change for individuals and households.
To address this issue and work towards achieving the SDG 12.3 target of halving food loss and waste by 2030, the Recipe of Change campaign was created in 2021 by UNEP’s Regional Office for West Asia and with the support of the GO4SDGs initiative. The main purpose of the campaign is to maximize visibility on the rampant global food waste problem, facilitate collective action, and highlight the key role of the hospitality sector in this regard.
In 2023, as part of the Green Ramadan initiative, the Recipe of Change messaging was rolled out in three Hilton Hotel outlets in West Asia, to promote behavioral change, food waste tracking and menu engineering (in partnership with Winnow technology). The initiative achieved an average of over 60 per cent food waste reduction during the 2023 Ramadan, thus highlighting the key role of the hospitality sector in climate action.
This initiative was upscaled during Ramadan 2024, to reach 32 Hilton hotels across seven countries, in three sub-regions (Turkey, Malaysia, UAE, KSA, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain). Thanks to a series of interventions, including trainings and capacity-building efforts based on insights from the 2023 campaign, the initiative marked significant success with a 21 per cent reduction in food waste throughout the month of Ramadan. Overall, compared to the 2023 baseline, the total food waste reduction following the 2024 activation stands at an impressive 74 per cent.
UNEP, with the support of GO4SDGs and in the framework of the 10YFP/OPN, is currently working to develop a Recipe of Change toolkit to further scale up the initiative across the hospitality sector.
During the 2024 International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste (IDAFLW 2024), the Recipe of Change campaign was rolled out globally in collaboration with several partners and stakeholders, leveraging advocacy materials for driving behavioral change and showcase action.
