The value of food waste: An exploratory study on retailing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2016.01.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Increasing concern over food waste but few research on retail food waste.

  • Attempt to estimate the environmental, social and economic value of retail food waste.

  • The environmental value of the food recovered is assessed basing on the consumption of natural resources.

  • The social value is estimated as the number of meals which can be prepared with the food recovered.

  • The economic value is based on the analysis of the revenues and costs of the project.

Abstract

Retailers are increasingly concerned with the sustainability of their business. Food waste is a major sustainability issue: 90 million tons of food are wasted in the EU every year. The production of much of this waste is directly linked to the food chain operations, included those performed at the retail stage. The literature on food waste has mainly focused so far on the quantification of the total food lost along the supply chain. However, the stage of retail has long been neglected. This paper attempts to partly fill this research gap, with the aim of measuring the extent of food waste in retailing as well as its environmental, social and economic value. To do so, we analyse the results of a food waste recovery project held in an Italian supermarket and, by drawing on the data collected in this case study, we perform an evaluation of the value of the food wasted. The results show that the extent of food waste in retailing is certainly considerable, both in terms of quantity and economic value. Moreover, we found evidence that it may be greatly reduced, with a significant limitation of its environmental impact and, through the mechanism of recovery, it may even generate social benefits. Despite the many limitations of such preliminary research, the results provide useful information for retailers aiming to develop strategies against food waste in the context of improving the sustainability of their business.

Introduction

In the food sector, waste is a major social, nutritional and environmental issue, affecting the sustainability of the food chain as a whole. In the EU alone, we waste 90 million tons of food every year, i.e. 180 kg per person (European Commission (EC), 2011a). This is due, firstly, to climate and biological factors beyond the control of man and, secondly, to the behaviour of food chain participants, including all the operations concerning the food management at the stage of retailers.

Some of the wasted products simply cannot be consumed, as they are not fit for human consumption and thus they must be considered “losses” in all respects. Instead, a part of the wasted products is still suitable for human consumption (Segrè and Falasconi, 2011). Halving this edible waste is one of the goals in the Roadmap to a Resource-Efficient Europe, not least because the food value chain in the EU is responsible for 17% of Europe's direct greenhouse gas emissions and 28% of its material resource use (European Commission (EC), 2011a). In order to prevent and reduce food wastage, the European Parliament declared 2014 the European Year against Food Waste, inspired by Last Minute Market1 and its campaign “One year against waste”.

The literature on food waste has so far focused on the quantification of the total food losses along the supply chain (Buzby and Hyman, 2012; Parfitt et al., 2010; Griffin et al., 2009) to highlight the negative implications of this phenomenon as well as its impact on the whole food system as a whole (Sonnino and McWilliam, 2011). However, the retail stage has long been neglected by such studies, although its contribution in limiting the implication of food waste might be consistent and, at the same time, sustainability is becoming an important business issue for retailers, as their practices may influence the whole supply chain process and its economic, environmental and social consequences (Claro et al., 2013).

This paper attempts to fill part of this research gap, by focusing on the extent of food waste at the retail stage of the supply chain. The aim of the research is to assess the impact of the food wasted in the retail stage, moving from the evidences of a case study in Central Italy. Namely, drawing from data collected during a project aiming to recover food waste for human consumption, we analysed the food waste at a supermarket by assessing its environmental, social and economic value.

To this purpose, the paper will first discuss the definition of food waste in order to clearly recognise, from a conceptual point of view, the proportion of food losses suitable for recovery. Then, we will focus on retailing, by analysing the state-of-the-art of the knowledge about food waste at this stage of the supply chain. In the empirical section of the paper, we will describe the design and implementation of a food recovery project in an Italian supermarket and, drawing on the data collected in this case study, we will perform an evaluation of the value of the food wasted at the supermarket. Such evaluation will encompass economic outcomes as well as the social and environmental impacts arising from the recovery process. These results, highlighting the scale and the causes of the food waste phenomenon at retailing stage, allow to draw some preliminary conclusions on the possible actions to be undertaken to reduce its dimension and potential impacts.

Section snippets

Food waste: definition, causes and strategies for prevention

The growing concerns about hunger, preservation of the environment and the economic crisis have raised public awareness of food waste (Buzby and Hyman, 2012; Kantor et al., 1997). As several authors now assert, there is a need to investigate the social and environmental implications of waste at different stages of the supply chain. Indeed, food waste has an impact on food security, on food quality and safety, on economic development and on the environment (Gustavsson et al., 2011).

Moreover,

Methodology

With the aim of measuring the extent of food waste at the retail stage of the supply chain and assessing its impact, we conducted an investigation involving a waste audit. Such investigation was meant to produce quantitative figures that could be used to do composition analysis.

We chose as a case study a supermarket ( 5300 m2) located in Viterbo, a medium-sized town in Central Italy. The food waste stream of the supermarket was studied by observing the food collected for the sake of a recovery

Quantity of food recovered

In the year 2012 food recovery took place on 300 days, with an average of 25 deliveries per month. In total, 23.5 t of food were recovered, which were perfectly fit for consumption and would otherwise have been discarded. In economic terms, these products had a total value of about €46,000.

The average quantity recovered on a daily basis was about 80 kg, with peaks of more than 100 kg in summer, when more food was wasted (Buzby and Hyman, 2012) (Fig. 5).

The value of recovered products (shown by the

Conclusions

The reduction of food waste has become a fundamental responsibility involving the entire community, from international institutions to individual citizens. Indeed, besides symbolising the contradictions of a society where opulence and extreme poverty live side by side, food waste also has negative implications in terms of resource allocation efficiency and environmental impact.

The food waste in the retail stage is an issue that is gaining more and more attention from the public opinion since,

Author contribution

Although the paper is the result of a collaborative effort by the authors, they contributed specifically as follows: Clara Cicatiello wrote §4, Silvio Franco wrote §1 and §5, Barbara Pancino wrote §2, and Emanuele Blasi wrote §3.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Welfare Services Department of the Council of Viterbo (Deliberation of the Welfare Services Department n.88 March 9th 2012), which funded the recovery project, as well as the Fondazione Carivit (Official Note of the President of Fondazione Carivit, Prot. n. 29/2010) which supported the research and the elaboration of the data retrieved. We also thank Alberto Giraldo, Caterina Valeri and Alberto Pasquini for their effort in the implementation of the project at the

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