Food Waste Behaviour at the Consumer Level: Pilot Study on Czech Private Households

Lea Kubíčková,Lucie Veselá,Marcela Kormaňáková

doi:10.3390/su132011311

Abstract

The issue of food waste is a problem that affects the whole society. Food is wasted throughout the food chain. Households are great contributors to the problem. A detailed analysis of municipal waste from the production of 900 Czech households was performed. These datasets allowed for comprehensive insides. The analyses of mixed municipal waste were performed every quarter of the year (summer 2019–spring 2020). The method of municipal waste analysis was supplemented by questionnaire survey among households and 10 in-depth interviews aimed at identifying the main causes of waste. One of the periods in which food waste was measured was affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This finding has also been confirmed by findings from other countries. The climatic crisis multiplied by the impacts of COVID-19 has highlighted the need to actively address the issue of food waste.

Highlights

According to Bozdağ and Çakiroğlu [54], the different food cultures may explain the reason for the differences in food waste. It is clear from the available studies that food waste is influenced by the number of socio-economic and behaviour factors; this study focuses on finding out the amount of food wasted in Czech households and on finding out these key factors and causes of waste
With the experiment, the authors have conducted a quantitative questionnaire survey to clarify the causes of waste and the ways households manage their food
As the need to address the issue of food waste grows, food waste produced at the household level is being examined from various angles

Summary

Introduction

Households—are the most significant sources of food waste throughout the entire food chain [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. Differences in household food waste estimates are caused by inconsistent methodologies [21,22]. This inconsistency results in that different numbers of food waste can be found in different sources, e.g., according to Food waste—causes, impacts, and proposals study [23], in Denmark food waste is estimated at 118 kg per person per year, in France 144 kg, in Luxembourg 207 kg, and in Sweden 227 kg.

Methods

Results

Conclusion