This paper co-authored by Table member Toni Meier quantifies the levels, environmental impacts and reduction potential of food waste produced in the business, healthcare and hospitality food service subsectors in Germany. It finds that significant waste reductions could be achieved within one year, with the greatest potential reduction of 17% being found in the healthcare subsector.

Table member Tom Quested has co-authored this report for the United Nations Environment Programme. The report presents up-to-date and comprehensive estimates of food waste around the world, based on the collation of a large number of national estimates of food waste. It also presents a methodology for countries to measure food waste consistently. The report focuses on waste from households, food service and retail.

This systematic review examines the impacts on environment, food security and human health of seven types of plastic used in the food system. The authors created an interactive evidence map, which can be viewed here. Most publications focused on the agricultural stage, with fewer looking at retail, household or food waste disposal. There is relatively little evidence on the impacts of food system plastics in low- and middle- income countries.

This article in The Atlantic explores the role that phosphorus - long thought to be a limiting factor in the productivity of the biosphere - plays in the food system. Phosphorus fertiliser has historically come from bones, phosphate rock deposits and human waste. Today, while there are fears of a shortage of mined phosphorus, phosphorus runoff also pollutes water and harms aquatic ecosystems. Companies are now trying to close the phosphorus loop by recovering the fertiliser from human sewage and animal waste.