Total documented waste fell by 16.1%, from 83.9 to 70.5 grams per person per day, and avoidable waste fell from 45.5 to 33.2 grams, while unavoidable waste such as bones and inedible peel barely changed. Waste discarded because of spoilage or mould fell most clearly, which points to storage, stock management and timely use of food at home as practical priorities.

A randomised study with 420 participants found that one-off psychological prompts, such as reflecting on past waste or setting if-then plans, produced no additional reduction compared with a control group, and the researchers note that the daily logging itself may have influenced behaviour. They recommend focusing communication on reducing avoidable waste rather than on a zero-waste goal, and call for better measurement methods, as self-recorded quantities were clearly below official estimates for German households. The project was carried out by TU Berlin and Slow Food Deutschland and funded by the German federal agriculture ministry.

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