Food waste environmental impact assessment as leverage to better guide restaurants toward improving their sustainability

Abstract

Food waste (FW) reduction plays a major role in achieving a sustainable food system since significant environmental impacts are associated with its generation. However, there is a lack of research aiming at quantifying its environmental impacts, especially in the foodservice industry. This paper aims to present, through a concrete exemple, a methodological approach based on life cycle assessment (LCA) allowing to highlight hot spots of FW in a restaurant based on environmental impacts. Foods discarded by an independent restaurant were quantified and categorized by performing a three-level waste composition analysis. An LCA was used to estimate FW environmental impacts under a cradle-to-grave approach. The impact categories of climate change, ecosystem quality, human health and fossil and nuclear energy use were used. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was performed to estimate the impact of several FW treatment methods. An important outcome of this study relates to quantifying the environmental impacts of 137 food items according to the four above-mentioned impact categories. The results suggest that the assessment of FW with only weight quantification is insufficient and should be completed by LCA data in order to target FW with high environmental impact. As for the restaurant under study, it was measured that approximately one-fifth of the food purchased was discarded. It has also been identified that reducing FW has great potential as it could reduce up to 17% of its environmental impacts associated with food. The hot spots that emerged are the meat and sea products categories. From these results, it is possible to develop strategies allowing the effective reduction of the environmental impacts associated with the FW from the restaurant under study.