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. 2021 May:168:105426.
doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105426.

Grown and thrown: Exploring approaches to estimate food waste in EU countries

Carla Caldeira  1 , Valeria De Laurentiis  1 , Agneta Ghose  2 , Sara Corrado  1 , Serenella Sala  1
Affiliations

Grown and thrown: Exploring approaches to estimate food waste in EU countries

Carla Caldeira et al. Resour Conserv Recycl. 2021 May.

Abstract

National studies on food waste quantification in EU countries present highly discrepant results due to the different quantification approaches adopted. The European Commission has published a delegated act establishing a common methodology and minimum quality requirements for the uniform measurement of food waste generated in Member States. Nevertheless, as EU countries are at different levels of development and implementation of national strategies for food waste quantification, there is a need to develop a harmonized modelling system that enables the estimation of food waste generated by Member States to assess the amounts reported by each country. The aim of this paper is to fulfil this need by presenting two modelling approaches to estimate food waste in EU countries. One approach is based on Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and combines statistical information on the production and trade of food products with food waste coefficients. The other approach is based on the estimation of food waste based on waste statistics. Three EU countries are used to illustrate the two approaches and compare the results obtained thereby. Food waste estimates from waste statistics are generally lower than those obtained using MFA, in particular at the early stages of the food chain. The MFA model presented in this article is the first of its kind developed to estimate food waste across Member States in a consistent way and through time. Crucially, this could support the definition of a baseline and binding targets to reduce food waste across the EU, as announced in the EU Farm to Fork Strategy.

Keywords: EU countries; Food waste; Material Flow Analysis; Waste statistics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image, graphical abstract
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Representation of the two approaches investigated for the estimation of food waste quantities. MFA: material flow analysis, WS: waste statistics.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Total amounts of food waste (in million tons of wet mass) for Italy, Germany, and Denmark for the year 2012 calculated using the material flow analysis (MFA) and waste statistics (WS) approaches. The error bars in the WS results represent the variation obtained using the full range of waste coefficients β_091 and β_092 reported by MSs.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Comparison of the food waste estimated (using the MFA approach) for different food groups at retail and distribution and consumption stages for Denmark, Germany, and Italy (2012). The small graph in the upper-right corner of each graph depicts the sum of the food waste per capita generated in each food group.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Comparison of the amounts of food consumed (grams per day per capita) for each food group. Data was obtained from EFSA (EFSA, 2015) and from the material flow analysis (MFA) approach.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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