To aid the selection of food waste disposal technologies, the EU
provides guidelines on which disposal technologies are preferable
(EC, 2014). This so-called food waste hierarchy (Fig. 1), stipulates
that governments should prioritise efforts (in order of most to least
preferable) to (i) reduce food waste, (ii) redistribute it (e.g. to the
homeless), (iii) recycle it as animal feed and (iv) compost, (v)
recover energy through anaerobic digestion, and finally, (vi) landfill
the remainder. This legislation is, however, notably not applied
with respect to the use of food waste as animal feed, because it is
currently illegal to use most food waste as feed in the EU.