Giving Compass' Take:

• Madeleine Keck reports that chefs from around the world gathered in Kuala Lumpur to address food waste, citing hunger that could be solved and environmental degradation that could be avoided by reallocating food to avoid waste. 

• How can funders support efforts to reduce food waste? Is there a profitable way to reallocate food that would be wasted? 

• Learn about an app reducing food waste in Nigeria. 

Tossing food away because it is uneaten, untasty, or spoiled is a common occurrence. In fact, it's so common that roughly one-third of all food produced each year is squandered or rotten before it can be consumed.

Reversing this trend would preserve enough food to adequately feed 2 billion people, considerably more than the one in nine who currently go hungry.

But food loss (food that is spoiled before it reaches the retail stage) and food waste (food that is not eaten and discarded) are not just major contributors to hunger, but also significant providers to the world's greenhouse gas emissions, as tonnes of rotten food sprawl across landfills around the globe.

In July, the World Association of Chefs Societies (WorldChefs) assembled in Kuala Lumpur to shine a light on the relationship between food waste, environmental decay, and hunger against those in the culinary industry.

Chefs from across the globe gathered at the congress to launch various Feed the Planet initiatives — programs aimed at educating those in the foodservice industry about how best to reduce their food waste.

Among the initiatives launched during the congress was the Food Waste Challenge, a three-month activity that urges chefs worldwide to begin measuring and revealing the amount of discarded food their kitchens produce. Chefs are then encouraged to make a commitment to reduce it.

Read the full article about fighting food waste by Madeleine Keck at Global Citizen.