In a time of high food prices and devastating droughts, food waste is an urgent concern. It's estimated that enough food is produced to feed the estimated 805 million people around the world that are going hungry each day, however, 1.3 billion tons, or one third of the food produced in the world, goes to waste each year.

Dow Chemical believes that packaging can be part of the solution to help reduce food waste, as well as conscientious consumer behavior both in the supermarket and at home. As such, in support of this year's World Food Day on October 16, Dow launched its Make It Last campaign to bring awareness to the reality of the global food crisis and ask consumers worldwide to make a commitment to help reduce food waste.

"Most people are unaware that food waste and food loss within the supply chain is a growing global issue," said Jeff Wooster, global sustainability leader for Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics. "Packaging helps reduce food waste by protecting food from being damaged, spoiled or abused and can help extend shelf-life to keep our food fresher longer."

Wooster told PlasticsToday (Is plastic packaging the 'silent hero' to the global food waste problem) that if we can reduce global food waste from 40% to 30% with better packaging and other improvements such as food production and distribution systems, we could potentially save enough food to nourish 1 billion people.

"This is clearly a significant task that requires a lot of collaboration and many different solutions, but it demonstrates the potential impact of packaging and value chain collaboration and those are the things that make our whole team, passionate about what we do every day," he said.

Dow is asking consumers to pledge your personal commitment to Make it Last through Dow's interactive website, where the company shares facts about the global food crisis and how you can help cut down on food waste.