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News > B Corps Against Food Waste: One Voice, Many Actions

B Corps Against Food Waste: One Voice, Many Actions

This week is Verspillingsvrije Week (8–14 September), the national campaign to tackle food waste in the Netherlands. Every year, enormous amounts of perfectly good food end up in the bin, wasting precious resources and fueling climate change. That’s why B Corps are joining forces to raise awareness and show that together, we can make food waste a thing of the past.

This week is Verspillingsvrije Week (8 – 14 September) in the Netherlands, a national moment to shine a light on one of the biggest sustainability challenges of our time. Every year, Dutch households, businesses, and institutions waste around 1.6 billion kilos of food. That means a traffic jam from Utrecht to Barcelona with trucks filled with perfectly edible food products, for which land, water, energy, and labor have already been invested, end up in the bin. Globally, food waste is responsible for up to 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the most urgent issues to tackle if we want to respect planetary boundaries and build a sustainable food system (source).

Why B Corps Are Taking Part

As a community of businesses committed to using business as a force for good, B Corps in the Netherlands are joining de Verspillingsvrije Week to raise awareness and show solutions in practice. For us, reducing food waste is not only about protecting the planet’s resources, it’s also about driving systemic change in how we produce, distribute, and consume food. And while each company has a responsibility to reduce its own waste, together we can have a far greater impact.

The B Corp Food Circle

That’s why over 20 Food B Corps in the Netherlands have joined forces in the B Corp Food Circle: a community of pioneering brands such as Tony’s Chocolonely, Danone, Crisp, Fishtales, Fairtrade Original, HAK, and many others.

The Food Circle collaborates on three key themes:

  • Regenerative agriculture
  • Open chain collaboration
  • Healthier food systems

On those topics knowledge and experience is shared between B Corps during community gatherings and working groups. The B Corp Food Circle members also committed themselves to collective actions and campaigns.

This week, during the Verspillingsvrije Week (8 – 14 September), the Food Circle is amplifying awareness through a joint campaign: B Corps Against Food Waste.

“The Food B Corps are truly among the front runners of the movement against Food Waste worldwide. From Instock, a food service wholesaler of rescued produce, to Too Good To Go helping consumers save unsold products, to Orbisk using AI to measure and prevent food waste in professional kitchens – these B Corps show that solutions are already here.” – Sebastiaan Aalst (Strategy Director Food Cabinet and founder of the B Corp Food Circle)

 

 

“The biggest breakthroughs in fighting food waste happen when companies join forces. At Crisp, we partner with hundreds of small-scale farmers and suppliers we know personally. Our upcoming partnership with Burgerboerderij de Patrijs shows how mutual efforts turns waste into value. Their winter field beans, unfit to reach the consumer market, were destined to be processed into animal feed. By working together, Crisp will prepare them into a tasteful, all-natural hummus, ready for our customers to enjoy.” – Michiel Roodenburg, co-founder at Crisp

 

 

Combating food waste is pre-eminently a subject on which you can work well together as companies. What is a residual flow for one company can be part of an innovation for another. In this way, you help each other to improve your impact and at the same time work on a good business case.

💡 The website of Stichting Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling – the initiators of the Verspillingsvrije Week – is full of tips for companies, individuals, governments and schools looking for ways to reduce their food waste.

The campaign is not just about showcasing what B Corps are doing to reduce Food Waste within their value chain, but also tries to inspire consumers to reduce food waste on a household level.

What the B Corp Standards Say About Waste

The fight against waste is also embedded in the new B Corp standards, launched in April 2025. With these new standards, B Corps are encouraged to progress toward measuring and managing their waste footprint, and to increase visibility into what is reused, recycled, or disposed of. For companies in the food sector, the requirements go a step further, placing greater responsibility on them to:

  • Measure and report their food waste in tonnes each year.
  • Track how much food waste is diverted for reuse, animal feed, by-products, composting, or energy recovery.
  • Show how much is disposed of, whether through incineration, landfill, or other methods.
  • Follow the food waste hierarchy, which prioritizes prevention and reuse over disposal.

The standards also require continuous improvement: food companies must show progress at Year 3 and Year 5, moving towards stronger circularity practices and less food ending up in the bin.

👉 Read more about the B Corp standards here

Join the Movement

This initiative proves what B Corps believe at their core: we can go further, faster, together. The collective voice of many brands carries more weight than individual messages, inspiring both consumers and other businesses to take food waste seriously.

Whether you’re a company, a consumer, or part of a community, take action this week. Prevent waste, support businesses tackling the issue, and share the message that food is too valuable to waste.

Want to start today? Search #Verspillingsvrij on social media for tips and tricks from B Corps on how to cut food waste at home, at work, and in your community.

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