International Zero Waste Day 2026 focuses on food: what we eat, what we waste, and how we can move towards a more cyclical future.

The world wastes food at an alarming rate. Every year, we throw away around 1 billion tons of edible food—almost a fifth of all food available to consumers. This has repercussions for both people and the environment.
Around 60% of food waste occurs in households. The rest comes mainly from food services and retail, as a result of inefficient food systems at all stages of production, distribution, and consumption. Addressing this problem requires redesigning these systems and transitioning to a more sustainable and cyclical approach based on efficiency, resilience, and sustainability.
For this transition to be successful, we all need to do our part.

Governments can:

• Promote food waste prevention through climate and biodiversity plans and national policies on circularity, waste, food systems, agriculture, and urban development, and promote measurement and monitoring.

• Strengthen public-private partnerships.

• Demonstrate leadership and take action by joining the Food Waste Breakthrough initiative.

The private sector can:

• Establish quantifiable food waste reduction targets and integrate them into existing sustainability commitments.

• Innovate to transition to circular food systems and improve efficiency across all supply chains.

• Join the Food Waste Breakthrough initiative to amplify solutions and share progress.

Consumers can:

• Plan, shop, store, and prepare food consciously to reduce waste and save resources.

• Support food recovery, redistribution, and composting initiatives.

• Help make food waste socially unacceptable through everyday actions. A waste-free future is possible if we work together: contribute by consuming consciously, recovering surplus food, and working to create circular food systems. Let's ensure that our food is valued and not wasted.

Background

On December 14, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution at its seventy-seventh session proclaiming March 30 as International Zero Waste Day, to be observed annually. Turkey, along with 105 other countries, introduced the resolution, following the adoption of other high-level decisions focused on pollution, such as the UN Environment Assembly resolution “Ending plastic pollution: towards a legally binding international instrument.” The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) are jointly organizing the observance of this day.
As part of this campaign, Member States, UN system organizations, civil society, the private sector, academia, women, youth, and other stakeholders are invited to participate in activities aimed at raising awareness of national, subnational, regional, and local zero-waste initiatives and their contribution to achieving sustainable development.

Promoting zero-waste initiatives through this international day can help advance all the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11) and Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12). These goals address the issue of waste, including food loss and waste, the extraction of natural resources, and waste electrical and electronic equipment.