Abstract
Although food surplus and food waste issues are extremely important, the amount of literature published on these topics is astonishingly low by our observation. The relationships between food surplus/food waste and economic/environmental sustainability have not yet been holistically assessed and discussed. The main purpose of this study is to understand global food surplus and food waste issues in order to tackle the economic sustainability and environmental sustainability crisis. Content analysis was used to analyze 500 relevant materials and was conducted by NVivo 12 Plus software. The results contain seven countries, six organizations, and six continents, providing a framework to recognize the economic and environmental sustainability crisis. In addition, six major organizations and regions were identified and were found to be relevant to the important issues of food surplus, food waste, the sharing economy, economic sustainability, and environmental sustainability. With the trend of globalization, this study highlights some preliminary evidence for reducing food waste, for conflicts of the sharing economy, and for regulated sustainability. Further research and regulations in terms of economic and environmental sustainability are strongly suggested.
Highlights
In society, owing to excessively convenient food accessibility, rapid development, progressive prosperity, and trends in developed countries, many issues relating to food waste and food surplus have emerged, and the situation is deteriorating
The results showed that the top ten most frequently used words were food waste, production, food surplus, management, countries, environmental, consumption, household, world, and economic
This study found out that there are a number of organizations globally that are focused on the issues of food surplus and food waste
Summary
In society, owing to excessively convenient food accessibility, rapid development, progressive prosperity, and trends in developed countries, many issues relating to food waste and food surplus have emerged, and the situation is deteriorating. According to the statistics of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which equates to approximately 1.3 billion metric tons per year [1]. Such a large amount of food waste provokes environmental and social burdens, such as social structure problems, overexploitation of land, economic ills, food security issues, the greenhouse effect, and unequal global food distribution [2].
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