The Horizon Europe project ROSETTA has launched the ROSETTA Digital Toolkit, an interactive online platform that reveals the often-overlooked link between marketing standards and food waste in Europe. Designed for a wide range of stakeholders, the Toolkit aims to build awareness, inform policy, and inspire change across the food system.
Understanding the Problem: Food Waste and Marketing Standards
Each year, millions of tonnes of edible food are wasted across Europe due to aesthetic or commercial requirements that dictate what food products should look like, from the size and shape of a cucumber to the colour of an apple. These marketing standards, while originally intended to ensure quality and consistency, can unintentionally exclude perfectly nutritious food from the market.
However, awareness of this issue remains limited among the public, policymakers, and even food professionals. ROSETTA addresses this knowledge gap by providing evidence and guidance on how marketing standards function, how they are applied, and how they can lead to the systematic rejection of suboptimal, but edible food.
What the ROSETTA Digital Toolkit Offers
The ROSETTA Digital Toolkit is a free, easy-to-use platform that brings together research, visuals, and policy insights in a structured and accessible way.
Specifically, the ROSETTA Digital Toolkit features three key components:
- Assessment Reports and Data Repository
This section presents insights into how marketing standards influence sustainability along the food supply chain. Users can access factsheets, research publications, policy briefs, and replication guidelines to support informed, evidence-based action. - Catalogue of Good Practices and Solutions
A curated database of innovative approaches and marketing models that give a second life to foods that fall outside conventional standards. The catalogue allows for cross-case comparison, highlighting impact and transferability. - Open Innovation Platform
An interactive hub where stakeholders can exchange good practices, propose new ideas, and collaborate asynchronously. This space fosters community dialogue and supports engagement with ROSETTA’s ongoing research activities.
Who is the ROSETTA Digital Toolkit for?
The ROSETTA Digital Toolkit is designed for a wide range of stakeholders across the food system who are seeking to better understand and address the issue of food waste driven by marketing standards. Its content is tailored to meet the needs of:
- Policymakers and public authorities seeking evidence-based insights and recommendations to inform regulatory frameworks and promote sustainable food governance.
- Food business operators including producers, processors, distributors, and retailers, who want to explore alternative marketing strategies and reduce avoidable waste in their operations.
- Researchers and academics interested in the data, assessments, and case studies related to food waste, standard-setting practices, and sustainability impacts.
- Civil society organisations and educators looking for accessible, multilingual materials to raise awareness, support advocacy, or engage communities on sustainable consumption.
- Innovation practitioners and platform users who wish to exchange ideas, co-create solutions, or participate in discussions through the Open Innovation Platform.
Furthermore, the Toolkit is designed to be used for awareness campaigns, staff training, stakeholder engagement, policy consultation, and advocacy while supporting users in their efforts to foster more inclusive, sustainable, and circular food systems.
Why It Matters
“By explaining how marketing standards work, and how they impact the food chain, this Toolkit helps empower a wide range of users to rethink and improve how we produce, distribute, and value food,” says Dimitra Kyriakopoulou, Project Coordinator of ROSETTA. “It’s about giving clear, evidence-based tools to act.”
This launch marks a key milestone for ROSETTA, which aims to not only reduce food waste but also challenge the assumptions and practices that drive it. Specifically, the Toolkit contributes directly to the project’s mission of improving market access for suboptimal foods and shaping policy frameworks that support sustainability and food equity.
Access the Toolkit and Learn more
The ROSETTA Digital Toolkit is freely available online and optimised for both desktop and mobile users.
Explore the Toolkit now:
About the project ROSETTA
ROSETTA is a Horizon Europe-funded project that aims to reduce and prevent food waste by improving market access for foods that fall outside conventional marketing standards but remain perfectly safe to eat. The project analyses how these standards contribute to food waste across the supply chain, investigates the reasons behind their establishment, and pilots alternative solutions through real-life use cases. By applying a multi-actor approach, ROSETTA develops, tests, and shares practical strategies for repurposing or redistributing suboptimal foods while delivering evidence-based recommendations to food businesses, standard-setting bodies, policymakers, and regulators to support more sustainable and inclusive food systems.
For more information about the project, its pilot actions, and upcoming activities, visit: https://rosetta-project.eu
