• develop and validate new tools and methods, and/or further test existing methods (including those developed by previous EU-funded projects), to measure and estimate food waste at household level, including the food waste discarded as or with wastewaters and that would help distinguish between amounts of avoidable (edible) fraction of food waste and non-avoidable (inedible) food waste. The potential of AI and other technologies (including ones that are currently available) to simplify the collection of data and the reporting (by being integrated in advanced monitoring solutions) should be considered. Interoperable metadata standards accompanying indicators coming from these new tools and methods should be provided. The metadata standards for edible and inedible food waste indicators should allow data to be federated through the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) infrastructure;
• these new tools and methods should be applied across a large enough sample of diverse type of products and target groups (in terms of gender, age, socio-economic status, ethnic and/or cultural origins, etc.), allowing for a more precise assessment of food waste fractions (edible and inedible), across several years and in a significant number of Member States, and potentially in Associated Countries. This should generate robust measurement/estimation of food waste at household level for different target groups, at national level. The potential for extensive uptake of the proposed solution should be clearly highlighted;
• in addition to measurement, the direct and indirect drivers and root causes of food waste at household level should be thoroughly investigated. Particular attention should be paid to the identification of consumer behaviours (food consumption and disposal patterns) and other factors that influence food waste at household level, to assess the potential for a reduction strategy based on change in consumer behaviours.

The required multi-actor approach must be implemented by conducting inter- and trans-disciplinary research and involving a wide diversity of food system actors, with special attention paid to consumers and civil society organisations.