Abstract
In 2015, the United Nations defined the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which include a target (12.3) on food waste. The target requires “by 2030, to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and to reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses”. The target has increased awareness about the food waste problem and boosted research in food waste quantification. Nevertheless, there is a lack of studies that adopt a systematic approach to account for food waste providing disaggregated values per food supply chain stage and per food groups. Such an approach could support policy makers in prioritizing interventions for food waste reduction. To fill this gap, this paper presents a high-level top-down approach to food waste accounting in the European Union. The study aims to support the understanding of the mass flows associated with food production, consumption, and waste, addressing different food groups along the food supply chain. The method for accountin is the mass flow analysis. According to the results, cereals, fruit, and vegetables as the food groups are responsible for the highest amount of food waste, and the consumption stage to be responsible for the largest share of food waste for most food groups. This work highlights the need for further primary research on food waste generation in the EU. Ultimately, this would allow to robustly estimate the food waste generated at EU level, and establishing a more accurate baseline to track the progress towards SDG target 12.3.
Highlights
The foreseen growth of the world’s population will increase significantly the pressure on natural resources to respond to food needs
The EC amended the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC (WFD) setting as obligatory the monitoring and reporting on food waste by Member States (MSs) to: (i) establish a baseline to monitor the achievement of food waste reduction targets; and (ii) help in the identification of relevant food waste streams to be valorised in a circular economy perspective (European Commission, 2018)
This work aimed at providing a detailed and comprehensive picture of the European Union (EU) food supply chain, with a focus on food waste generation, based on Mass Flow Analysis (MFA) and statistical data sources. Such accounting approach is deemed more robust than previous research combining food waste coefficients with statistical data (e.g. Gustavsson et al, 2011), thanks to a more accurate analysis of the flows of food across the FSC obtained through a detailed breakdown of different commodities at processing, retail and distribution, and consumption stages
Summary
The foreseen growth of the world’s population will increase significantly the pressure on natural resources to respond to food needs. Food waste is a major global challenge from an ethical and social point of view, and from environmental and economic ones. It represents an inefficient use of the scarce resources used to produce it, such as land and water (FAO, 2013). In 2015, the United Nations defined the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 to “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns” within which, target 12.3 is referring to food waste: “By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses” (UN, 2015). The European Commission (EC) committed to achieve the SDG target in the European Circular Economy Action Plan, defining food waste as a priority area (European Commission, 2015). The EC amended the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC (WFD) setting as obligatory the monitoring and reporting on food waste by Member States (MSs) to: (i) establish a baseline to monitor the achievement of food waste reduction targets; and (ii) help in the identification of relevant food waste streams to be valorised in a circular economy perspective (European Commission, 2018)
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