Food waste and the management of surplus food

Food waste is produced in every stage of the food supply chain, however, not all the surplus can be equally recovered nor it is suitable for human consumption.Please see CCEA (2019). Food Waste Fact Sheet in the See Also section below to explore how food waster is produced across the entire food chainGarrone et al. (2014) developed a framework to assign a Degree of Recoverability (DoR) to food surplus at different stages of the supply chain, called Availability-Surplus-Recoverability-Waste (ASRW). The index is meant to evaluate the level of food waste at every step of the food supply chain and try to recover it and prevent it where it’s possible.The surplus food that is not recovered to feed people, to feed animals, to produce new products, new materials or energy (Garrone et al, 2014).
Other traditional food waste reduction mechanisms follows:
- Optimize inventories to prevent overstocking
- Donation of food surplus to charities
- Sales of products near the end of their shelf-life
- Food sharing among households
- Raise public awareness and promote waste-reducing behaviors
Case Study: Bring The Food App & QuantoSpreco?
One example of ICT application to the problem of food waste and surplus is the italian app BringTheFood. Created and launched in 2011, it was the first web application to connect potential food donors with charities and it helped collect more than 720 tons of food. It is designed so anyone registered on the platform can publish donations of surplus food and anyone who has a use for it can collect it. Furthermore, the donations have to indicate a few details of the products such as the food category, a short description, quantity and packaging, expiration date, and the availability.What is most appealing about BringTheFood is its innovative logistics, which allow a drastic shift from traditional mechanisms of recovery, stocking and distribution, usually managed by few actors, to a more flexible approach in which smaller quantities of food are recovered by many actors.Later, the app introduced a mediator to ensure the quality of donations and respect the guidelines set by the Food Bank, allowing only pre-approved donors to join a “private network” of entities trusted by the Food Bank.BringTheFood also allows canteens to track their surplus and report the amount of servings available to donate organized per type of dish. In comparison to the original app experience, based on the wait for a charity to book the donations, in this formula the donations are already targeted and the pickup is guaranteed.Another application worth citing is QuantoSpreco?, which allows the general public to reduce food waste in their households. Users have access to various tools just with one click: they can track the content of their pantries and fridges, can enter the expiration date of each item they buy, and mark consumed items so they are automatically added to a shopping list.Moreover, a user can track their waste by marking an item as wasted or partially wasted, so the app reduces the amount required or it removes it from the shopping list. The application has the capability to estimate over time the average shelf life of products that the user buys and consumes, offering suggested recipes and improving the overall grocery shopping experience.But taking into account the quantity of food that is wasted yearly in both developed and developing countries, by companies and citizens, it becomes evident how current practices to recover food surplus are still unable to solve food waste and overcome food poverty.Food poverty and Food Charity
The relationship between food poverty and food charity is pivotal in the process of examining the rise of food banks in many welfare countries.Food charity can be defined as the “process of collecting, sorting and distributing surplus or wasted food to feed the hungry poor in wealthy nations, and is one of the solutions implemented to solve the social problem of food poverty” (Dowler, 2003, p. 151). But few focal questions, about the nature and the true extent of charitable food banking, have been raised by many researchers (Poppendieck, 1998):- Does food charity undermine the principle of food justice and the human right to access adequate food and nutrition?
- In which ways does it exacerbate food poverty and inequality?
- Is food charity a moral safety valve?
What we would like you to do
Food and associated packaging waste is an environmental and ethical issue. There are a number of organisations and iniatives regionally that exist in order to tackle the issue of food waste in the food system. For example, in the UK: WRAP UK, Courtauld Commitment; and Love Food Hate Waste NI are all examples of organisations aiming to reduce food and assocaiated packaging waste.Please use the internet to conduct your own research and find out what organisations are tackling food and associated packaging waste in your region and share them with us in the comments section below. You might want to include:- Name of organisation
- A short description on how they aim to reduce food and associated food packaging waste
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