food waste management project research paper

Most food waste happens at home – new research reveals the best ways to reduce it

Associate Professor in Behavioural Decision Making, University of Leeds

Disclosure statement

Gulbanu Kaptan was awarded research funding (with project partners WRAP and Zero Waste Scotland) from the UKRI ESRC for a project on reducing household food waste (2020-2022). She is a Co-investigator on a UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund project on ensuring food system resilience. Between 2021 and 2023, she worked as an expert member of the European Consumer Food Waste Forum.

University of Leeds provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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The EU and UK pledged to reduce food waste, in line with the UN’s goal to halve global food waste by 2030. With most (approximately 53%) of total food waste in European countries occurring in homes, this stage of the food chain presents the most significant challenge due to the need for widespread behaviour change.

Although consumer food waste is a complex issue influenced by factors such as people’s knowledge, habits, social norms and food supply chain efficiency, reducing household food waste is achievable.

Reduction of food waste can have multiple benefits, including conserving limited natural resources such as water, improving food security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. My new research shows that reduction is possible with the right tools for behaviour change and consumer willingness to prevent food waste.

I was in a team of 15 researchers and practitioners with expertise in consumer food waste prevention, working with the European Consumer Food Waste Forum . We evaluated 78 interventions across the EU, UK and beyond .

A combination of different approaches is needed to significantly reduce consumer food waste – there’s no single thing that could change the way everyone deals with their food waste. Customised interventions to specific groups of consumers works best, especially when people are willing, engaged and actively involved in the process.

We identified which of the solutions resulted in the biggest reductions in consumer food waste and made recommendations to tackle the problem.

Here are five steps that can help reduce food waste in your household:

1. Find out the facts

Start by educating yourself and your family to raise your awareness and motivate you to make changes to your daily routine. Look online at environmental charity Wrap ( the Waste and Resources Action Programme ) for useful resources about the problem of food waste and its negative effects on our present and future.

Share this knowledge and experience with your family, including your children. Learn about the ways to prevent food waste at home, for example, how to store food to eat healthily with less waste and how to reuse leftovers.

2. Make small changes

Make simple adjustments to your routine at home. Try going shopping with a list to avoid buying food you don’t need and might not use, plan your meals to buy just the right amount of ingredients, check date labels on packaging to prioritise eating items that are closer to expiring and reuse leftovers to make sure every bit of edible food is consumed.

3. Get confident in the kitchen

Cook and eat at home more often to eat healthily and reduce food waste .

Sign up to a cooking class to develop your skills in a fun way. Learning to prepare food more efficiently or getting creative with leftovers will help you make the most of your ingredients and prevent waste.

4. Use visual reminders

Employ simple tools and prompts to remind you about sustainable switches that can be incorporated into daily life. Put a sticker on foods that are nearing expiration dates to use them first or take pictures of wasted food to put it on your fridge as a visual reminder of the negative impact of waste.

5. Mix it up

Combine various approaches to prevent food waste in a way that works best for you and keeps you on track. Follow online tips and advice from organisations such as Zero Waste Scotland and Hubbub , use food waste apps such as Kitche, Too Good To Go or Olio to share excess ingredients with neighbours.

You can also get involved with community programmes in your local area such as FareShare Yorkshire and Surplus2Purpose , an initiative that redistributes unwanted food stock to those who need it most.

By adopting some or all of these practices and encouraging others to do the same, you can contribute to a larger movement to reduce food waste and help promote healthier and more sustainable eating habits.

• Behaviour change
• Sustainable food
• Motivate me

Manager, Regional Training Hub

Head of Evidence to Action

Supply Chain - Assistant/Associate Professor (Tenure-Track)

OzGrav Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Casual Facilitator: GERRIC Student Programs - Arts, Design and Architecture

Systematic literature review of food waste in educational institutions: setting the research agenda

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

ISSN : 0959-6119

Article publication date: 29 January 2021

Issue publication date: 6 May 2021

In the recent past, academic researchers have noted the quantity of food wasted in food service establishments in educational institutions. However, more granular inputs are required to counter the challenge posed. The purpose of this study is to undertake a review of the prior literature in the area to provide a platform for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

Towards this end, the authors used a robust search protocol to identify 88 congruent studies to review and critically synthesize. The research profiling of the selected studies revealed limited studies conducted on food service establishments in universities. The research is also less dispersed geographically, remaining largely focused on the USA. Thereafter, the authors performed content analysis to identify seven themes around which the findings of prior studies were organized.

The key themes of the reviewed studies are the drivers of food waste, quantitative assessment of food waste, assessment of the behavioural aspects of food waste, operational strategies for reducing food waste, interventions for inducing behavioural changes to mitigate food waste, food diversion and food waste disposal processes and barriers to the implementation of food waste reduction strategies.

Research limitations/implications

This study has key theoretical and practical implications. From the perspective of research, the study revealed various gaps in the extant findings and suggested potential areas that can be examined by academic researchers from the perspective of the hospitality sector. From the perspective of practice, the study recommended actionable strategies to help managers mitigate food waste.

Originality/value

The authors have made a novel contribution to the research on food waste reduction by identifying theme-based research gaps, suggesting potential research questions and proposing a framework based on the open-systems approach to set the future research agenda.

• Plate waste
• School cafeteria
• University cafeteria
• Out-of-home consumption
• Consumer behaviour
• Food waste cause

Kaur, P. , Dhir, A. , Talwar, S. and Alrasheedy, M. (2021), "Systematic literature review of food waste in educational institutions: setting the research agenda", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management , Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 1160-1193. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-07-2020-0672

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Puneet Kaur, Amandeep Dhir, Shalini Talwar and Melfi Alrasheedy.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

unavoidable food waste: expired or spoiled ingredients, food scraps such as meat scraps (e.g. end pieces of baked ham after slicing, meat pieces after trimming) and vegetable scraps (e.g. tomato ends, outer leaves of lettuce, potato peels, vegetable stems); and

avoidable food waste: meal scraps such as peeling or trimming waste arising from the less proficient handling of food items; overproduction for banquets, events and catering; poor ordering procedures; poor food rotation practices, causing food spoilage; and poor inventory systems, leading to food and plate waste such as unconsumed pasta ( Derqui and Fernandez, 2017 ).

Academics categorize food waste based on the stages of waste generation, such as pre- and post-consumer food waste ( Prescott et al. , 2019b ). Pre-consumer waste occurs at the production level, and post-consumption waste occurs at the consumer level. Scholars argue they associate different factors with food waste generation at these stages. Accordingly, various mitigation approaches perhaps can reduce such waste ( Papargyropoulou et al. , 2016 ). Furthermore, thorough diagnoses of food waste generated at various stages are crucial for ensuring the effective management of waste ( Dhir et al. , 2020 ).

Food waste is an important concern because it threatens the environment and sustainability. In fact, it is a serious concern in the hospitality and tourism domain (Okumus et al. , 2020). Close to 1.3 billion tonnes of edible food is wasted annually, leading to severe financial, environmental and health outcomes ( Gustavsson, 2011 ). Past research has identified several adverse outcomes of food waste, such as threats to food security ( Wang et al. , 2018 ), climate change and greenhouse gas emissions ( Kallbekken and Sælen, 2013 ; Katajajuuri et al. , 2014 ) and monetary loss (Hennchen, 2019). For instance, the annual emissions because of food waste in Finland constitute more than 1% of the country’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions ( Katajajuuri et al. , 2014 ). Similarly, scientists found the ecological impact of food waste in hotels, cafés and restaurants nearly twice the size of the arable land in Lhasa ( Wang et al. , 2018 ). Notably, sustainability has come under intense focus in the hospitality industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic (Jones and Comfort, 2020). In addition, studies have underscored the nutritional loss associated with food waste. For instance, Blondin et al. (2017) revealed that, in the USA, fluid milk waste results in 27% and 41% losses, respectively, of the vitamin D and calcium required under school breakfast programme meals. Consequently, scholars argue that reducing food waste is critical from financial (e.g. food cost) and non-financial (e.g. sustainability) standpoints ( Okumus, 2019 ). In fact, research reports suggest that, by saving one-fourth of the food being wasted, we can feed 870 million hungry people ( Khadka, 2017 ). Similarly, the sustainable development goals of the United Nations (UN) have also emphasized responsible production and consumption, underscoring the importance of mitigating food waste ( Gustavsson, 2011 ).

Regarding food waste generation, prior studies have indicated that a large amount of food waste is generated at the consumption stage, which includes both out-of-home and at-home dining ( Martin-Rios et al. , 2018 ). Households represent at-home dining, whereas the food service sector represents out-of-home dining. The food service sector includes both non-commercial and commercial establishments ( Betz et al. , 2015 ), such as restaurants, hotels, health-care companies, educational institutions and staff catering.

An important subdomain where out-of-home dining takes place is food service establishments at educational institutions. In this context, prior studies have observed that school cafeterias are a major source of unconsumed food ( Smith and Cunningham-Sabo, 2014 ; Adams et al. , 2016 ). For instance, in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in the USA, more than 30% of the food served is wasted ( Byker Shanks et al. , 2017 ). In fact, food waste in educational settings is a significant issue ( Yui and Biltekoff, 2020 ). What is most worrying in this context is that, in spite of the acknowledgement of such a high quantity of waste generated, the authorities in educational institutions, food service managers in schools and university food service companies’ staff are not intent on reducing food waste ( Wilkie et al. , 2015 ). Furthermore, the academic research in this area is limited, with most studies in educational settings (particularly in the context of schools) skewed towards using food waste as a measure to estimate the amount of nutrients lost. Food waste does not hold a central place in the existing debate. Other studies have focused on aspects such as the composition of waste generated in the food service operations in schools (Hollingsworth et al. , 1995) and the monetary implications of various waste disposal strategies (Wie et al. , 2003).

the substantial volume of meals that educational institutions handle at a single location ( Wilkie et al. , 2015 ); and

the opportunity that such research presents for creating a culture of sustainability and for reinforcing the pro-environment habits of future consumers by making them ecologically aware of the food system and its importance ( Derqui et al. , 2018 ).

analyze the research profile of studies on food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions (RO1);

identify, comprehend and evaluate the thematic foci of the existing research on food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions (RO2);

critically assess emergent themes to highlight gaps in the extant literature and suggest potential research questions (RO3); and

develop a framework that multiple stakeholders can use as a reference to understand the contours of food waste in the food service establishments in educational institutions (RO4).

To achieve the ROs of the study, we used the systematic literature review (SLR) approach to identify, analyze and synthesize past studies in the area in consonance with recent studies ( Kushwah et al. , 2019 ; Dhir et al. , 2020 ; Ruparel et al. , 2020 ; Seth et al. , 2020 ). Towards this end, we conducted the following steps. First, we defined the extraction method of congruent studies concerning the conceptual boundary, database identification, keyword choice and actual search and shortlisting of relevant studies. We formulated a robust search protocol based on 18 keywords as well as comprehensive inclusion criteria (IC) and exclusion criteria (EC). We also conducted a peer review of shortlisted studies to finalize the total number of studies to be included in the review (88). Second, we conducted a research profiling of selected studies to present the summary statistics related to publication frequency, publication sources, geographical scope of each study, type of educational institution investigated and theoretical framework. Third, we performed a manual content analysis of the congruent studies to delineate the thematic foci of such studies. This helped us identify seven distinct themes. The emergent themes were critically analyzed to identify the gaps in the extant research and to suggest theme-based potential research questions and future research avenues. Fourth, we developed a framework (the food waste ecosystem) for presenting a systems view of food waste in the food service establishments in educational institutions by building on the key findings of the review that we conducted (i.e. research themes, research gaps and avenues of future research). Fifth, we discuss herein the theoretical and practical implications of the study, followed by the study limitations, which should be kept in mind while implementing the results of this study.

2. Research method

Step I. Planning the review: Setting the conceptual boundary and identifying the relevant keywords and databases to identify the congruent studies.

Step II. Specification of the study screening criteria: Defining the IC and EC.

Step III. Data extraction: Using multiple levels of screening to identify congruent studies.

Step IV. Data execution: Presenting the research profile and the thematic foci of the congruent studies uncovered through content analysis.

2.1 Planning the review

We proposed to review studies on food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions. These institutions include pre-schools, schools (primary, secondary and upper secondary), tertiary education centres, colleges and universities. Furthermore, we distinguished between food waste and food loss. Some prior studies used the terms “food loss” and “food waste” interchangeably ( Betz et al. , 2015 ). However, many scholars have treated them as two different concepts. They described food loss as food gone to waste in the initial stage of the value-added chain and food waste as food lost at the end of the food supply chain ( Parfitt et al. , 2010 ). Our understanding is that “food loss” pertains to food leaving the supply chain initially. “Food waste”, though, pertains to the food that is not consumed at the point of food consumption. Therefore, in this SLR study, we treated food waste and food loss as distinct concepts. Accordingly, we identified an initial set of keywords for use in searching the studies to be reviewed, as follows: pre-schools, schools, tertiary education centres, colleges and universities. We searched for these keywords on Google Scholar, and we analyzed the first 100 results to update the keywords list. Afterward, we examined leading journals from the areas of nutrition, food waste and hospitality to confirm if the list of keywords was exhaustive. We selected the final list of 18 keywords after consultation with three experts from the area of hospitality and food waste (two professors and one practitioner; Table 1 ). Finally, in consonance with Mariani et al. (2018) , we selected Scopus and Web of Science as the two academic databases from which to retrieve the relevant studies. These two are the most comprehensive databases of social science and hospitality academic studies, with extensive disciplinary coverage ( Mongeon and Paul-Hus, 2016 ).

2.2 Specification of study screening criteria

We specified ( Table 2 ) the IC and EC at this stage to screen the studies found using pre-specified keywords.

2.3 Data extraction

We converted the final set of keywords ( Table 1 ) into search strings using * and Boolean logic, as well as the connectors “OR” and “AND”. We then executed the search strings on both databases to search for the title, abstract and author keywords. The search was conducted from January 1 to March 28, 2020. In Scopus, we found 550 journal articles in English, with 420 articles in Web of Science. We used the pre-specified IC and EC to select studies congruent with the area at hand. First, we screened duplicated articles using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. We identified articles with the same authors, title, volume, issue number and DOI. Subsequently, we removed 276 duplicated studies from the Web of Science list. After further screening of the joint pool of 694 studies, we excluded 350 studies from the pool.

For the next level of screening of the remaining 344 studies, three researchers with experience in food waste research reviewed the titles and abstracts of the retrieved studies based on the conceptual boundary and IC and EC. To ensure robust screening, the three researchers performed the task individually, after which they shared their shortlists with one another. The researchers discussed any variances in their respective shortlists to arrive at a consensus list that could be further analyzed. This process excluded 230 studies incongruent with the specific area and conceptual boundary of the current study. At the penultimate step of screening, 3 authors analyzed the full texts of the balance 114 articles to reconfirm their eligibility for inclusion in the review. By consensus, we removed 14 articles, as these dealt with issues not immediately relevant to the review, such as sustainability and food insecurity. In the final stage of the study screening process, two professors and a practitioner from the area of hospitality and food waste examined the 100 shortlisted studies and supplied feedback. Based on their observations, we eliminated 12 studies, making the final sample of 88 articles. Subsequent sections of this work will disclose the results of the research profiling and content analysis, which constituted the data execution process.

2.4 Data execution: research profiling

We present the research profile of the retrieved congruent studies concerning descriptive statistics, such as publication year, publication source, educational institution investigated, geographic scope of each study and theoretical framework. The year-wise publications ( Figure 1 ) indicate that there were few studies on food waste in the food service establishments in educational institutions until 2012, after which the studies increased, reaching a peak of 15 articles in 2019. Furthermore, the studies were published in a variety of journals in nutrition and waste management ( Figure 2 ). Figure 3 presents the number of studies that focused on each type of educational institution (e.g. school versus university). Figure 4(a) and (b) presents the countries where the studies were conducted for schools and universities, respectively. Interestingly, the reviewed studies drew upon seminal theories to propose a hypothesis and/or discuss findings ( Table 3 ).

3. Thematic foci

The studies included in the review examined food waste from different perspectives and investigated distinct aspects of it. To synthesize such diverse studies systematically, we attempted to identify the common themes within the studies. The key themes in the selected studies were identified through content analysis, in consonance with the recently published SLR literature ( Seth et al. , 2020 ). To ensure that emergent themes would present an unbiased view of the literature, we followed a three-step process. First, three researchers performed the open coding. Later, the deductive and inductive methods of axial coding identified relationships among the open codes. Second, to ensure consensus and inter-rater reliability, the three researchers discussed the identified codes and aligned their thought processes. As food waste is a universally understood phenomenon, there were no disagreements except in the sequencing and presentation of the themes. Third, two professors from the hospitality and food waste areas commented on the identified themes. Finally, seven themes synthesized the existing literature. These were the drivers of food waste; quantitative assessment of food waste; assessment of the behavioural aspects of food waste; operational strategies for reducing food waste at the pre- and post-consumer levels; strategies and interventions for inducing behavioural changes to mitigate food waste; food diversion and food waste disposal processes; and the barriers to the implementation of food waste reduction strategies. A mind map of the emergent themes and the related subthemes is showcased in Figure 5 .

3.1 Drivers of food waste

Two perspectives can assess food waste at food service establishments in educational institutions: pre- and post-consumer waste ( Prescott et al. , 2019a ). “Pre-consumer waste” is kitchen waste arising at the time of storage, preparation and production, whereas “post-consumer waste” consists of leftovers or plate waste ( Burton et al. , 2016 ; Bean et al. , 2018b ; Zhao and Manning, 2019b ). Scholars have also used the term “serving waste” or “display waste” (especially regarding buffet meals) to represent waste at the point of consumption ( Abdelaal et al. , 2019 ). Prior scholars examining food waste at the pre-school, elementary and middle school levels have discussed uneaten meals, representing post-consumer waste, to a large extent ( Smith and Cunningham-Sabo, 2014 ; Adams et al. , 2016 ; Zhao et al. , 2019 ). Most studies focused on food waste measurement as a tool to assess the nutritional aspects of leftovers from meals consumed in schools ( Getts et al. , 2017 ).

Pre-consumer waste : It is generated based on various functional, behavioural and contextual factors, as presented in Table 4 . A key driver of food waste in school food service establishments at this stage is production waste, which can also increase because of various regulatory requirements and contractual obligations. For instance, food safety guidelines may prevent food service establishments from re-using the extra amount of food prepared for a particular meal ( Derqui et al. , 2018 ). As such, serving an agreed-upon variety of food offerings as per a contract may force kitchen staff to prepare and serve food that ultimately may not be consumed ( Derqui et al. , 2018 ).

Post-consumer waste : The drivers of post-consumer waste comprise behavioural, contextual and demographic factors, as Table 4 presents. Within post-consumer waste, the key drivers of wasted, edible food at both the school and university levels are taking a portion size larger than required as per one’s age and satiation level ( Thorsen et al. , 2015 ; Huang et al. , 2017 ; Zhao and Manning, 2019a ); and the time allowed for eating (i.e. recess; Cohn et al. , 2013 ; Abe and Akamatsu, 2015 ). Students’ dietary habits ( Liu et al. , 2016 ) also influence the amount of food waste generated in the school dining halls. Other factors that contribute to food waste at the university food services were incorrectly labelled food items (which led to the choice of wrong food items), differences in appetite and diet-related choices ( Wu et al. , 2019 ; Yui and Biltekoff, 2020 ).

Low self-efficacy in finishing one’s meal if it does not taste good is a significant predictor of plate waste only among boys ( Abe and Akamatsu, 2015 ).

Male students tended to waste staple food less compared to females ( Wu et al. , 2019 ).

Male consumers were more likely to finish their meal compared to females ( Zhao and Manning, 2019b ).

Young consumers tend to waste more food than adults on average ( Ellison et al. , 2019 ).

Within the student groups, younger students wasted more food than older ones ( Dillon and Lane, 1989 ; Huang et al. , 2017 ; Niaki et al. , 2017 ).

Individuals with more disposable incomes waste more food ( Wu et al. , 2019 ).

Middle-income students generated more food waste compared to students with poorer backgrounds ( Dillon and Lane, 1989 ).

3.2 Quantitative assessment of food waste

the type of waste quantified;

the unit of measurement used; and

the method used for quantification.

The key concerns covered by each of these aspects are described below.

Type of waste: Some studies have measured all waste, edible or avoidable as well as inedible or unavoidable ( Langley et al. , 2010 ; Costello et al. , 2015 ). In comparison, many studies quantified only edible or avoidable food waste ( Whitehair et al. , 2013 ; Thorsen et al. , 2015 ). The items considered edible or avoidable food wastes are meat protein, soy protein, fruits, rice, potatoes, bread, pies, juice, beverages, milk, vegetables and salads ( Langley et al. , 2010 ; Thiagarajah and Getty, 2013 ; Blondin et al. , 2017 , 2018 ; Eriksson et al. , 2018b ). Conversely, the inedible or unavoidable food wastes are fruit or vegetable peels and spines, eggshells, bones and skins and seeds ( Langley et al. , 2010 ; Whitehair et al. , 2013 ; Derqui and Fernandez, 2017 ). The greatest amount of food waste is derived from vegetables, fruits, salads, main entrées and milk (Carmen et al. , 2014; Smith and Cunningham-Sabo, 2014 ; Blondin et al. , 2015 ; Silvennoinen et al. , 2015 ; Wu et al. , 2019 ).

Unit of measurement: In this regard, the reviewed studies collected wastes for quantification at different stages of food services. Accordingly, the serving waste, plate waste and production waste (prepared food left over after service) were quantified ( Gase et al. , 2014 ; Eriksson et al. , 2017 ; Boschini et al. , 2020 ). Hence, scientists measured the entire mass of food waste generated at every meal (Carmen et al. , 2014; Painter et al. , 2016 ); the aggregated discarded food at the pantry, kitchen, service station or plate level ( Derqui et al. , 2018 ); or the individually/aggregately weighed plate waste ( Chapman et al. , 2019 ). The most commonly used unit of food waste quantification is plate waste, which is the quantity/percentage of edible food served on a plate but left unconsumed ( Huang et al. , 2017 ). In schools, where the focus is nutrition, plate waste is the quantity of edible vegetables and fruits students did not consume during lunch ( Adams et al. , 2016 ; Capps et al. , 2016 ). In this context, studies have revealed that students waste 40% and 30%, respectively, of the fruits and vegetables they receive ( Templeton et al. , 2005 ; Carmen et al. , 2014). Most of the studies included in the review used plate waste as a unit of quantification of food waste ( Cohen et al. , 2013 ; Liz Martins et al. , 2016 ; Chapman et al. , 2017 ; Hudgens et al. , 2017 ).

Methods of quantification : There are multiple methods of quantifying and measuring plate waste, and one can observe method variations in the plate waste quantification approach that selected studies used, such as direct physical measurements and indirect visual observations ( Eriksson et al. , 2018b ). Plate waste can be weighed in grams per portion served ( Eriksson et al. , 2018a ) or as aggregate plate waste per meal ( Eriksson et al. , 2017 ). Although weighed plate waste is considered the gold standard for determining the quantity of plate waste, scientists have also applied visual assessment approaches such as the quarter-waste method, which is considered reliable ( Derqui and Fernandez, 2017 ; Getts et al. , 2017 ; Niaki et al. , 2017 ). In fact, the three visual waste measurement methods (photograph, half-waste and quarter-waste) have been found to be as accurate as the plate weighing method ( Hanks et al. , 2014 ). Visual methods are appealing, as they offer advantages such as convenience, time savings and ease of using a larger sample size to monitor plate waste ( Liz Martins et al. , 2014 ). Within visual methods, many studies have used photography ( Smith and Cunningham-Sabo, 2014 ; Yoder et al. , 2015 ; Bean et al. , 2018a ; Katare et al. , 2019 ; Prescott et al. , 2019a ; Serebrennikov et al. , 2020 ). Moreover, scholars have discussed the use of rubbish analysis to quantify food waste ( Dresler-Hawke et al. , 2009 ; Derqui and Fernandez, 2017 ).

Prior scholars have also tried to ascertain the efficacy of different methods of plate waste quantification. For instance, Bean et al. (2018a) compared a weighed and digital imagery-based assessment of plate waste and confirmed the accuracy of the digital imagery method in terms of plate waste estimation. However, Liz Martins et al. (2014) contended that the visual estimation method is not as accurate as the weighing method in assessing nonselective aggregated plate waste. Previous studies have used food waste audits to quantify the amount and type of food waste generated ( Wilkie et al. , 2015 ; Costello et al. , 2017 ; Derqui and Fernandez, 2017 ; Derqui et al. , 2018 ; Schupp et al. , 2018 ; Prescott et al. , 2019a ). Figure 6 depicts an overview of the stages of waste generation, the types of waste quantified and the key methods of quantification.

3.3 Assessment of the behavioural aspects of food waste

key methods;

type of data collected; and

variety of respondents.

Key methods : The methods used for assessing food waste include direct observation ( Marshall et al. , 2019 ), field notes ( Yui and Biltekoff, 2020 ), cross-sectional questionnaire ( Abe and Akamatsu, 2015 ), semi-structured interviews ( Zhao et al. , 2019 ), non-structured interviews ( Falasconi et al. , 2015 ), structured interviews ( Burton et al. , 2016 ), focus group discussion ( Blondin et al. , 2015 ), experiments ( Kim and Morawski, 2013 ) including randomized controlled experiments ( Katare et al. , 2019 ), quasi-experiments ( Visschers et al. , 2020 ), longitudinal studies ( Lagorio et al. , 2018 ; Marshall et al. , 2019 ) and pre- and post-test-based intervention studies ( Kowalewska and Kołłajtis-Dołowy, 2018 ; Kropp et al. , 2018 ; Lorenz-Walther et al. , 2019 ; Visschers et al. ,2020 ). Figure 7 presents a snapshot of the methods.

Type of data collected : Scientists use self-reporting questionnaires quite frequently to identify the key factors influencing food waste, the reason for plate waste and preferences ( Thorsen et al. , 2015 ; Liu et al. , 2016 ; Huang et al. , 2017 ; Kowalewska and Kołłajtis-Dołowy, 2018 ; Derqui et al. , 2020 ). In addition, questionnaires gathered eating behaviour-related information and food preferences ( Baik and Lee, 2009 ). Notably, prior scholars have made limited qualitative attempts to assess consumer behaviour concerning food waste generation. For instance, Jagau and Vyrastekova (2017) conducted a study to observe the differences between the intention to prevent food waste and the actual waste that consumers generated. Similarly, researchers examined staff and students’ insinuated intentions related to food waste ( Zhao and Manning, 2019b ). A few studies have also analyzed the changes in behaviour with regard to food waste and its reduction ( Whitehair et al. , 2013 ; Pinto et al. , 2018 ; Boulet et al. , 2019 ; Visschers et al. , 2020 ). Along the same lines, fewer studies have focused on the ethnic background of students or other demographic factors. For example, only two studies using a mixed-method approach have undertaken ethnographic investigations ( Lazell, 2016 ; Izumi et al. , 2020 ). Similarly, a limited number of researchers ( Nicklas et al. , 2013 ) have used a demographic questionnaire (e.g. age, ethnicity). Langley et al. (2010) acknowledged the effect of gender-based differences in food consumption and waste; they selected dining areas for the study based on gender composition.

Regarding the variety of respondents, qualitative studies have taken place with many stakeholders, such as kitchen managers, nutrition service directors and sustainability staff ( Prescott et al. , 2019b ), professionals engaged in food recovery ( Prescott et al. , 2019a ), stakeholders along the supply chain ( Liu et al. , 2016 ), school head teachers ( Derqui et al. , 2020 ), managers and staff in schools and catering firms ( Derqui et al. , 2018 ), key informants about stakeholder accountability ( Cohn et al. , 2013 ), food service managers, catering personnel, students ( Marais et al. , 2017 ), teachers ( Prescott et al. , 2019a ) and parents ( Baik and Lee, 2009 ).

3.4 Operational strategies for reducing food waste

strategies to reduce food waste at the pre-consumer level; and

strategies to reduce food waste at the post-consumer level.

This work will explore both strategies in what follows.

Pre-consumer level : The reviewed studies discussed several operational strategies to reduce waste at the pre-consumer level. The main objective of these strategies was to reduce food waste at the kitchen level. Waste at this level occurs largely because of overproduction, mishandling, staff inefficiency and the quality of food prepared. Accordingly, strategies largely target these issues ( Table 5 ). Post-consumer level : The operational strategies to reduce waste at the post-consumer level largely relate to avoiding serving food that would not be consumed. With plate waste being the focus of waste quantification, many previous scholars have discussed strategies to reduce plate waste. Most of the suggestions relate to the serving portion size based on age, going trayless and making better food choices, as Table 5 illustrates.

3.5 Interventions for inducing behavioural changes to mitigate food waste

communication; and

financial and economic incentives.

Education and communication have been suggested to be the most effective approaches for behaviour change ( Whitehair et al. , 2013 ).

Education : Past studies have recommended a holistic approach to decrease food waste, which involves multiple stakeholders in society, including parents and catering staff ( Marais et al. , 2017 ; Wu et al. , 2019 ; Izumi et al. , 2020 ). Studies also have indicated the need to identify and increase the engagement levels of families that have the lowest level of engagement in food waste reduction behaviour ( Boulet et al. , 2019 ). Students can receive education, as an intervention, through lectures on morals, sustainability and related environmental issues, or through a hands-on experience such as visiting landfill sites or segregating their plate waste themselves by putting the leftovers in separate bins ( Wu et al. , 2019 ). Curricula should integrate student engagement and social norms related to eating without waste into food-waste-related discussions, along with nutrition education ( Izumi et al. , 2020 ). Table 6 presents the key educational interventions introduced at the pre- and post-consumer levels. Besides discussing the interventions, some prior studies also tested their efficacy. For instance, Kowalewska and Kołłajtis-Dołowy (2018) revealed that students’ exposure to film was more effective in reducing food waste among students than giving an informational leaflet to parents or guardians. Similarly, Whitehair et al. (2013) reported that a to-the-point prompt-type message effectively reduced food waste by 15%.

Communication : Interaction among varied stakeholders is essential to reducing food waste ( Cohn et al. , 2013 ; Marais et al. , 2017 ; Derqui et al. , 2018 ). Clear and continuous communication among kitchen managers, kitchen staff, students and school authorities boosts the success of food waste reduction efforts ( Prescott et al. , 2019b ; Zhao and Manning, 2019b ).

Financial and economic incentives : These incentives encourage consumers to finish their meals ( Sarjahani et al. , 2009 ). However, there is a challenge here. Providing financial incentives to motivate food waste reduction behaviour among students is effective. However, a non-intended adverse outcome of such incentives for finishing the food on one’s plate could be overeating and obesity. Therefore, any intervention related to food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions should be integrated with healthy eating policies ( Katare et al. , 2019 ).

3.6 Food diversion and food waste disposal processes

The processes related to the diversion and disposal of the daily waste of food service establishments in educational institutions are important aspects of food waste reduction and control efforts. The primary objective at this stage of handling food waste should be to divert it from landfills through recycling ( Wilkie et al. , 2015 ). Such diversion processes are a way of reducing food waste, as they decrease the actual amount of scraps destined to be buried in landfills ( Prescott et al. , 2019a ). The reviewed studies discussed the following approaches to handling food waste: reuse (e.g. staff meals), recycling (e.g. composting) and disposal ( Derqui and Fernandez, 2017 ).

the redistribution of edible, non-perishable and perishable food by donating it to food banks, shelters and other food-insecure groups ( Burton et al. , 2016 ); and

the recovery of food waste through anaerobic digestion and composting, which are the processes of converting leftovers into useful end products, such as nutrient-rich soil amendments and bio-energy ( Sarjahani et al. , 2009 ; Wilkie et al. , 2015 ; Burton et al. , 2016 ; Wu et al. , 2019 ).

The key disposal method discussed by the past studies is the landfill. The approaches discussed by the extant studies range from pulping waste for landfilling to lunchroom food-sharing programmes and leftover lunch service in the form of redistributing leftovers ( Babich and Sylvia, 2010 ; Laakso, 2017 ; Prescott et al. , 2019a ).

Although a limited number of studies have discussed the food diversion and disposal processes in detail, most seem to agree on the donation of edible recovered food as a feasible option to redistribute waste. For instance, Deavin et al. (2018) revealed the popularity of a novel breakfast programme based on donated food to increase food security. Schupp et al. (2018) discussed a “backpack programme” where food-insecure students were to carry temperature-controlled leftovers home. Many other studies have discussed food donation to reduce food waste but emphasized that it is possible only through the collaborative efforts of food service establishments and the beneficiaries of such donations ( Hackman and Oldham, 1974 ; Sarjahani et al. , 2009 ; Blondin et al. , 2015 ; Marais et al. , 2017 ; Balzaretti et al. , 2020 ; Derqui et al. , 2020 ). The results of our study indicate that much of the generated food waste is landfilled, even though landfilling represents a missed opportunity to recover food and promote sustainable behaviour ( Prescott et al. , 2019b ). Finally, prior studies have contended that the sustainability initiatives of diversion, recovery and redistribution can be made successful and effective through proper waste sorting and waste audits by food service establishments ( Prescott et al. , 2019a ).

3.7 Barriers impeding the implementation of food waste reduction strategies

pre-consumer;

operational;

post-consumer;

food waste tracking; and

food diversion and recovery levels.

a lack of willpower and a negligent attitude;

the pressure to quickly finish one’s work; and

less experienced and incompetent personnel.

Prescott et al. (2019b) revealed that limited storage capacity for dry/cold storage also acted as a barrier to success in reducing food waste by impacting the inventory management plans of kitchen managers.

short lunch breaks and too few kitchen staff to allow the adoption of the batch cooking approach as a waste mitigation strategy ( Prescott et al. , 2019b );

the increased breakage of meal utensils and the need to wipe dining tables more frequently, which made it challenging to use the strategy of going trayless to reduce waste ( Thiagarajah and Getty, 2013 );

parents scolding their children for bringing home leftovers and providing bins at school, which presents an easy way to dispose of unconsumed food through the reuse of leftovers ( Boulet et al. , 2019 ); and

the timing of recess ( Chapman et al. , 2017 ).

Post-consumer level : The behavioural and perceptual aspects at the post-consumer level also help impede efforts to reduce food waste. In this context, Zhao et al. (2019) cited the differences in satiation level and social influences as key barriers. Consumers tended to throw away food that they disliked but found it unacceptable to waste the food that they liked. Similarly, Prescott et al. (2019b) argued that factors such as weather, changing tastes and preferences, and seasonal changes also acted as barriers to the success of the efforts to reduce food waste. Other barriers to food waste reduction also stemmed from consumers’ intention−behaviour gap (Lazell, 2). In addition, unsupportive school policy in terms of not allowing students to share food they did not want with others or take leftovers home also hampered food waste reduction efforts ( Zhao et al. , 2019 ).

the time devoted to weighing and keeping a record of food waste;

difficulties in weighing certain items, such as soups;

the ongoing training required for the weighing of waste because of employee turnover; and

spatial constraints.

food safety concerns and food quality standards, which impose limits on the donation of edible leftovers for human and animal consumption;

the prohibitive cost of transportation, heat treatment of waste for making it safe for animal consumption and setting up onsite composting units compared with the low cost of landfilling waste, making redistribution a financially unviable solution;

adverse publicity for the effectiveness of nutrition programmes, highlighted by the waste generated and where legal liability also acts as a disincentive; and

the lack of a clear understanding of the kinds of recovery activity the law permits.

4. Research gaps and potential research questions

We critically assessed the emergent themes to identify the gaps in the literature on food waste reduction measures. We mapped the identified gaps onto the seven themes to present theme-based gaps. We also suggested potential research questions that future researchers can address to close these gaps. The multiple gaps in the literature concerned the seven themes. Table 7 demonstrates potential research questions.

5. Framework development

Based on our content analysis, we identified the key themes on which the extant research on food services in educational institutions focused. The learning emerging through these themes has helped us develop a deeper understanding of the area. Our review has revealed that the entire food service–food waste debate represents a complex ecosystem consisting of different stakeholders and processes that interact but are driven by diverse priorities, as some of the reviewed studies also have argued ( Prescott et al. , 2019b ). Consequently, we have built on this learning to apply the systems approach.

a repeated input–process–output–feedback cycle; and

the influence of the external environment.

We adopted the systems approach to develop a framework that presents various aspects of food waste in the food service establishments in educational institutions as an open system that provides a holistic view of food waste in educational settings ( Figure 8 ). We call the framework developed by us the “food waste ecosystem (FWE)”. FWE consists of the following:

the internal and external environment;

transformative processes;

competing forces;

output; and

feedback loop.

FWE posits that food waste generation and mitigation in educational institutions depend on the interaction of various subsystems that are interdependent and integrated into an organized whole.

To begin with, the food waste system is conceptualized as an open system influenced not only by cues from the internal environment but also by cues and stimuli from the external environment. The internal environment represents the environment within the food service establishment in educational institutions and includes factors such as school policies and methods of food production. It impacts how transformative processes are executed. The external environment represents the environment outside the educational institution and includes factors such as government regulations, composting facilities and food banks.

Inputs are the first block in FWE. Inputs represent the first step in a systems model, and represent the decisions at the beginning of the process that finally result in waste generation. Typically, at this stage, they include decisions such as what is to be served per meal, the food service regime that mandated a particular type of meal to be served, dietary guidelines (particularly in the context of schools), the dining facility and the number of consumers. These decisions affect the amount and type of food prepared, the use of local produce, the storage facilities required, the beverages served, the use of temperature-controlled food items, the portion size, the method of service (self-serve, tray system or trayless system) and the ambiance of the dining area. The decisions at this stage set the tone for the extent to which food waste is generated in the next step in the systems model: the transformative process.

The four key transformative processes at this stage are food production, food service, food consumption and food diversion. Each of these processes presents a potential point of food waste generation. As discussed in the themes, food production is a part of the pre-consumer phase, where the kitchen staff’s role is important. Food service represents serving food for consumption. The food consumption stage is where consumers enter the picture. Food diversion is a process that takes place after the consumption phase is over.

These four activities are the subsystems of the transformative process that is a chaotic tradeoff of competing forces and conflicting priorities. FWE identifies seven broad competing forces based on the reviewed literature: functional issues, behavioural factors, demographic influences, contextual issues, interventions, waste tracking systems and supportive policies. For instance, the functional issues that can generate food waste are overproduction, a lack of trained staff, the mishandling of ingredients and the lack of awareness of the seriousness of food waste among the staff and consumers. Similarly, the size of the portion in staff-served meals, the amount of food added to serving dishes, meal presentation and spillage during handling can generate food waste. Functional issues associated with the donation of edible waste for human consumption, the treatment of waste for animal consumption, composting, anaerobic digestion or landfills also affect the amount of waste generated.

Regarding behavioural factors, the negligent attitude of a kitchen and service staff, the lack of willingness to prevent waste, food preferences, level of satiation, the influence of the social group and family, and the inherent intention–behaviour gap may lead to food waste. Demographic influences in terms of age, gender, household income and ethnic background also influence the amount of food consumed or left unconsumed, contributing to food waste. Contextual factors such as the quality and taste of meals, the unpleasant ambiance of the dining room, the extent of supervision (for younger consumers) and the eating duration can potentially increase food waste.

The four competing forces (functional, behavioural, demographic and contextual) represent the reasons behind the increased food waste in the food service establishments in educational institutions. However, interventions, robust waste tracking systems and supportive policies can reduce food waste. The challenge is that most of the interventions require some expense and effort in terms of time and money. For instance, offering financial incentives may reduce food waste, but for food service establishments, such food waste savings will make economic sense only if the money saved from less food going to waste is more than or at least equal to the financial incentive. Similarly, interventions such as education campaigns may cost money, and whether they are worthwhile will depend on the money saved from less food going to waste. One way of compensating for costs is for a government’s support policy to make the expenses incurred for food waste mitigation efforts tax-deductible. In addition, the initiatives for food diversion, such as food donations, have an associated legal liability that suitable policy guidelines can reduce.

The supportive policy of educational institutions can help by granting permission to take home leftovers, share food, provide better dining areas and make provisions for adequate eating time between academic commitments. In the case of the food tracking system, the immense effort required for sorting, weighing and training the staff to operate such a system represents a cost that must be offset by balancing the savings in food costs. In this way, the food waste ecosystem is an interdependent mass of competing forces that interact to increase or decrease the quantity of food generated, and the food waste mitigation decisions at the micro level are a trade-off between costs and benefits. The output of the transformative process is the quantity of waste generated. The amount and composition of the waste provide feedback, which can help revise decisions at the input level.

6. Conclusion, implications, limitations and future research areas

6.1 conclusion.

This study presents the status of food wastage in food service establishments in educational institutions, as reflected in the extant literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no contemporary SLRs that have analyzed food wastage in the food service establishments in educational institutions as a separate vertical. The current study addresses this gap to offer insightful implications for theory and practice. First, it sets the conceptual boundary by including all food service establishments in schools and universities. We selected this subdomain because the focus of the studies has largely been school lunch, where researchers have mainly assessed food waste to compute nutritional loss. In comparison, studies focused on food waste as a central concern, and studies examining food waste in higher education are limited. This indicates a need to catalyze research in the area. Thereafter, the study rigorously follows the SLR method to identify, synthesize and critically evaluate the 88 studies on the topic to reveal their research profile and thematic foci. The seven themes we identified through content analysis are the drivers of food waste; quantitative assessment of food waste; assessment of behavioural aspects of food waste; operational strategies for reducing food waste; interventions for inducing behavioural changes to mitigate food waste; food diversion and food waste disposal processes; and barriers to the implementation of food waste reduction strategies. The review goes beyond presenting the state-of-the-art in the area to uncover the gaps in the extant investigations and to suggest potential research questions that could motivate future academic research from the hospitality perspective. In addition, we developed a framework based on the open-systems approach to depict the complexity of the area and the multiple factors that influence its decision-making.

For the novel contributions of this study, it is the first SLR to review food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior review study has systematically reviewed and evaluated the extant research on food waste in the education sector. The only other review study on food waste in the area was the review of the NSLP in the USA ( Byker Shanks et al. , 2017 ). This review focused on the methods of quantifying food waste and the respective results of each method in the NSLP context from 1978 to 2015. The current SLR goes beyond both quantification and NSLP. Another novel contribution of this study is that the gaps that we identified in the extant research are theme-oriented, paving the way for encouraging future academic research through tangible suggestions in the form of theme-based potential research questions. This study also presents a systems view of the dynamics of food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions by identifying the input decisions; the transformative processes; the influence of low-threshold interventions and barriers; and the output in terms of the quantity of food waste. Finally, the practical inferences offered by the study are actionable, useful, contextual and easily transferable across various food service establishments serving educational institutions.

6.2 Theoretical implications

SLR has four key theoretical implications. First, although several researchers have investigated food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions, most have skewed towards the nutritional implication of unconsumed food in the school lunch context, with the quantification of food waste merely serving as a basis to capture nutritional loss. The hospitality literature has yet to focus on the issue of food waste in institutional settings in spite of its strong implications for sustainability and direct association with food services, an inherent part of the hospitality sector. By presenting the key themes, we have provided a ready platform for hospitality researchers to expand the scope of their investigations to include food wastage in educational institutions.

Second, we identified theme-based gaps ( Table 7 ) in the extant research that need to be addressed through empirical investigations from a hospitality perspective. Besides identifying theme-based gaps, we also suggested potential research questions ( Table 7 ) in consonance with prior reviews ( Swani et al. , 2019 ), which can help set the future research agenda in the area. Furthermore, our study revealed that future studies need to focus on food waste as contributing to increased carbon footprints and food insecurity. Such studies will take the focus beyond the nutritional emphasis on ecological implications for the greater good.

Third, in addition to identifying the theme-based gaps and potential research questions, we conducted research profiling of the retrieved and screened literature to identify the scope of the future research concerning the need for theory-based examinations, geographies that need attention and the type of educational institutions that have remained neglected in food waste research. The need for theory-driven investigations, which are now quite deficient, is supported because “theory” alone can yield consistent conclusions from causal patterns in data ( Han,2015 ). The need to explore diverse geographies is justified, considering that food consumption and leaving food unconsumed may be rooted in culture ( Yoder et al. , 2015 ; Pinto et al. , 2018 ; Izumi et al. , 2020 ). The need to focus on hitherto under-explored subsectors in higher education is justified because more granular findings are required to help food service establishments, regulators and university authorities plan and execute sustainable food waste control strategies targeting a group that makes independent decisions. Finally, the FWE framework that we developed presents a systems approach to food waste management that provides researchers with a bird’s eye view of the key areas to investigate in a study examining food waste generation and mitigation in food service establishments in educational institutions.

6.3 Practical implications

SLR has six key practical implications. First, a systematic tracking system can help create awareness and motivate anti-food-waste behaviours at the pre-consumer level, as prior studies have discussed ( Burton et al. , 2016 ). Therefore, catering companies offering food services in educational institutions should implement software with a simple interface to capture food-waste-related data, forecast the number of meals, identify popular menu items and classify waste into edible and non-edible.

Second, the overemphasis on nutritional content and rigid food-serving guidelines can increase food waste, as school authorities may determine portion sizes accordingly. This could be counterproductive from both the nutritional and waste perspectives if the food served is not consumed. For instance, the larger portion sizes that the school determines may cause overnutrition and obesity ( Balzaretti et al. , 2020 ). Therefore, the dietary guidelines that the concerned authorities issue should be indicative so portion sizes are adjusted according to hunger level and personal preferences. Competitive foods that usually have higher fat and sugar contents ( Templeton et al. , 2005 ) can be removed or vended at other times to ensure that the served meals are consumed to satiate hunger.

Third, formal guidelines for quantifying food waste should be prepared and made available to the food service managers in the cafeterias. There also should be a board or display where the aggregate daily food waste at the pre- and post-consumer levels is displayed for everyone to see. This likely will increase food waste awareness and encourage kitchen staff and students to reduce food waste.

Fourth, as food waste is a critical issue, school and college authorities hiring catering services (including cooks and kitchen staff) can also adopt a more structured approach to discouraging food waste. For instance, an inefficiency index ( Falasconi et al. , 2015 ) can be calculated weekly as the percentage of food wasted at the pre-consumer and serving stages compared to the amount of food prepared. Such an index will highlight the deficiencies in the kitchen processes, the slackness of the staff and the inaccurate forecasting of the number of consumers.

Fifth, the proper sorting of food waste can reduce it in two ways: by increasing the chances of recovering edible leftovers for donation and by making concerned stakeholders aware of the waste they are generating. Therefore, regulators or administrative authorities at the educational institution level can make it compulsory for every dining hall to have separate bins with labels for the disposal of different types of waste, including liquid waste, according to Schupp et al. (2018) . Furthermore, consumers should be asked to throw their individual plate waste in the designated bins.

Finally, from a regulatory standpoint, the policy guidelines for food waste reduction should consider the cost of waste reduction processes and offer financial incentives such as tax rebates for initiatives to reduce waste through food diversion. The issue of the legal liability associated with donating food to non-profit organizations for charity is a great disincentive, preventing the giving away of food for charity. To overcome this impediment, donors can be freed of any such legal liability. This practice exists in countries such as Italy and the USA ( Derqui et al. , 2018 ). Furthermore, policymakers should promote an approach to menu design based on the inclusion of more low-carbon-emission food items and fewer high-carbon-emission food items. This is likely to provide food cost savings at the food service level and environmental cost savings at the societal level.

6.4 Limitations and future research areas

We conducted a deep analysis of the extant research on food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions to uncover key themes and gaps. This has made a significant contribution to theory and practice by presenting potential research questions and implementable practical suggestions. However, readers should evaluate the contributions of this study in the context of the following limitations. First, we used Scopus and Web of Science only to search congruent studies and did not juxtapose any other digital library or database. This could have resulted in the exclusion of studies not listed in these two databases. Second, we included articles published only in English and could have missed important regional findings in the local language. Third, like any other SLR study, we faced the challenge of executing extensive search and screening, complexities in synthesis and presentation of findings in a manner that would be palatable to a wide variety of readers. Accordingly, we could have missed information because of inadvertent human error. Fourth, although we followed a systematic approach to identify keywords for searching the congruent literature, the area of food waste is quite vast. We may have excluded keywords. However, we used a robust search and screening protocol to present rigorous analysis to serve as a reliable basis for guiding future research and practice. Future researchers can extend our work by including keywords such as “campus dining”, “food rescue”, “food scarcity on campus”, “food recycling”, “food waste tracking”, “meal plans”, “food supply chains” and “food clubs on campus”. Future work can advance this study by reviewing reports from governments and policies implemented to highlight the gaps between academic research and government initiatives or between evidenced-based and non-evidenced-based methods. In addition, researchers should examine food waste in schools/universities in developed and developing economies, because the extant literature primarily skews towards US-based educational institutions. In this regard, researchers can also focus on cross-cultural/national comparison to provide deeper and more generalizable insights. Food waste studies in educational institutions can also include employees who consume food in the school/university dining facility, as examined in the case of frontline employees working in various hospitality establishments (Luu, 2020). Furthermore, as the drivers and, ultimately, the remedial actions/strategies for handling the issue of food waste may differ between public and private educational institutions, future researchers can build on our findings by separately reviewing the sample of studies on public and private educational institutions. Finally, future studies can explore whether increasing organic food consumption ( Tandon et al. , 2020a , 2020b ; Tandon et al. , 2020c ) has impacted food waste behaviours in educational institutions.

Year-wise publications in food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions

Publications on food waste in the food service establishments in educational institutions, by journal

Food service establishments examined by the studies

Geographic scope of the studies

Thematic foci of studies on food waste in educational institutions

Methods of food waste quantification

Methods of data collection

Systems approach to food waste mitigation: The food waste ecosystem (FWE) framework

Keywords for the literature search

Study inclusion and exclusion criteria

Theoretical framework used in food waste in food service establishments in educational institutions

Drivers of food waste in food service establishments

Operational strategies for food waste reduction

Interventions for food waste reduction

Theme-based gaps and related potential research questions

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Faisal University for the financial support under Nasher Track (Grant No. 186300).

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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Sustainability assessment of food waste prevention measures: review of existing evaluation practices.

• Thünen Institute of Rural Studies, Braunschweig, Germany

The last few years, a lot of measures addressing food waste have been proposed and implemented. Recent literature reviews call for more evidence on the effectiveness or food waste reduction potential of these measures. Furthermore, very few information is available on the extent to which food waste measures have been evaluated based on their economic, environmental and social performance. This review closes this knowledge gap by looking at the methodologies currently used in literature to evaluate food waste prevention measures, using a pre-defined assessment framework with quantitative evaluation criteria. In total, evaluations were examined for 25 implemented measures with measured outcomes and 23 proposed measures with projected outcomes. The paper concludes that there is a great variety in how an evaluation is performed. Additionally, in many cases, economic, environmental, or social assessments are incomplete or missing, and efficiency is only seldom calculated. This is particularly true for implemented measures whereas proposed measures with projected outcomes tend to have a more thorough evaluation. This hampers practitioners and decision-makers to see which measures have worked in the past, and which ones to prioritize in the future. Moreover, more complete information on the effectiveness and efficiency of measures would make incentives for reducing food waste at various levels along the food chain more visible. At European level, work is ongoing on the development of a reporting framework to evaluate food waste actions. This paper complements these efforts by providing an overview of the current gaps in evaluation methodologies found in literature regarding food waste prevention measures within EU and beyond.

Introduction

Urgency of tackling food waste.

Food losses and wastes are generated throughout the food chain, from cultivation, over harvest, processing, storage and distribution up until the final consumption by private households and the food service sector. In 2011, the FAO provided a comprehensive overview of the amount of food losses and waste generated at global level ( Gustavvson et al., 2011 ). Globally, about 1.3 billion tons of edible food, or about one third of the mass of edible food produced for human consumption, is annually lost or wasted. At EU level, 88 million tons of edible and inedible food was lost or wasted in 2012. This equals about 20% of the total food produced in the EU and up to 173 kg of food waste per person per year ( FUSIONS, 2016 ).

Based on the 2011 Food Balance Sheets, the FAO estimates that the annual global volume of food wastage generated has a carbon footprint of 3.6 Gt of CO 2 eq (excluding land use change). If food wastage were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world, after USA and China ( FAO, 2015 ). Furthermore, 24% of freshwater resources and 23% of the cropland used to produce food in 2011, was lost throughout the food supply chain ( Kummu et al., 2012 ). At EU level, food waste has an annual climate change impact of 186 Mt CO 2 eq., representing almost 16% of the carbon footprint of the total food chain ( Scherhaufer et al., 2018 ).

Based on 2009 commodity prices at producer level, the FAO estimates the economic costs of global wastage of agricultural food products, thus excluding fish and seafood, at $750 billion ( FAO, 2013a ). In 2014, FAO adapted the figures to 2012 prices and replaced the producer prices for post-agricultural wastage with import/export market prices. This leads to a final monetary value of $936 billion for global food wastage ( FAO, 2014 ). At European level, costs of edible waste are estimated to be at around €143 billion for EU-28 in 2012, based on the value of the edible food at each specific stage along the food chain where it is lost ( FUSIONS, 2016 ). Two-thirds of these costs, or €98 billion, relates to food waste from households whereas the second largest contributor is the food service sector, with a food wastage cost of €20 billion.

Finding the Most Promising Measures to Tackle Food Waste

In order to reduce or prevent food waste, many measures have been put forward of which a great deal of them has been implemented. To know which measures provide the best opportunities and what actions are the most promising, a thorough evaluation of food waste interventions is needed.

For businesses, applying food waste prevention measures only makes sense if there is an economic incentive to do so. As preventing food waste comes at a cost, actors along the food chain could be expected to only implement a certain measure if the benefits resulting from saving food gone wasted outweigh the costs associated with the implementation of the measure ( HLPE, 2014 ; WRAP, 2015 ). At production level, not harvesting all crops may be a strategic decision in case of low market prices or in case these leftover crops positively affect the yield of the next season. At business level, transaction costs associated with food waste prevention may be so high that it becomes “rational” to let food go wasted. This could be the case for correctly matching food supply and demand or for increasing delivery frequency and buying smaller quantities. At household level as well, consumers might prefer buying more products at once to going shopping on a more frequent basis, with the risk of a part of them not being consumed in time ( FAO, 2014 ; Teuber and Jensen, 2016 ). In these cases, one might say there is an “optimal” amount of food waste ( Teuber and Jensen, 2016 ).

To overcome these challenges, players along the food chain need an economic incentive for tackling food waste. Other than economic concerns, there may be ethical, social, or ecological benefits resulting from food waste prevention measures that could for example contribute to a company's positive image or corporate social responsibility ( FAO, 2014 ; WRAP, 2015 ). For private consumers as well, ethical, social, or ecological concerns, next to economic ones, may results in generating less food waste.

A clear understanding of the net economic benefits associated with each measure, as well as its associated environmental and social effects, increases transparency, and could create incentives for (further) reducing food waste by the various players along the food chain.

The Knowledge Gap Regarding the Performance of Food Waste Measures

In its review on food waste literature, Schneider (2013) stated that “papers introducing evaluation methodology or presenting reliable results of evaluating implemented food waste prevention measures are lacking.” Rutten et al. (2013) further concluded that literature on the quantification of food waste reduction potential is scarce and that impacts of food waste prevention initiatives are often not quantified.

Since 2013, a couple of reviews were published looking into the extent to which reports or studies consider the food waste diversion potential of food waste measures. Pirani and Arafat (2014) reviewed solid waste management in the hospitality sector. For many of the food waste initiatives they collected, information on the associated food waste reduction potential is missing. Aschemann-Witzel et al. (2017) collected information on the key characteristics and success factors of 26 supply chain initiatives tackling consumer-related food waste. It is however, from this review, not clear whether these initiatives actually led to measurable food waste reduction, as “success was not defined as an actual reduction of food waste, given it was expected that few initiatives can actually measure this.” As such, actual proof of success might as well be “the extent to which information or supportive items had been distributed to consumers” (e.g., measuring cups for preparing the right amount of rice or pasta) as this is assumed to lead to food waste reduction on the long run. Stöckli et al. (2018b) and Reynolds et al. (2019) both looked at the effectiveness of food waste interventions at consumption level. Interestingly, informational interventions were found to be the most commonly used intervention type while at the same time they are seldom evaluated, resulting in a lack of proof of their effectiveness ( Stöckli et al., 2018b ). Furthermore, for some initiatives that are often reported to be effective and promising, such as cooking classes, food sharing apps, advertising and information sharing, no actual evidence could be found on whether or not they were effective ( Reynolds et al., 2019 ). From these reviews, it can be concluded that the potential of food waste measures to reduce food waste is only being evaluated to a limited extent. Stöckli et al. (2018b) and Reynolds et al. (2019) therefore specifically call for more information on the actual effectiveness of food waste measures.

Given the fact that the amount of food waste prevented by a measure is seldom taken into account, neither the ecological impacts nor monetary costs associated with food waste measures can be assessed. To our best knowledge, no reviews currently exist assessing the extent to which ecological impacts, monetary costs or savings, and efficiency of food waste measures are considered. Several authors have however stressed that, in case monetary aspects are taken into account, these tend to be restricted to the costs embodied in the food itself (based on for example retail prices), whereas disposal related costs are neglected ( Rutten et al., 2013 ; Teuber and Jensen, 2016 ; Cristóbal et al., 2018 ; Koester et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, Koester et al. (2018) concluded that costs incurred by the measure itself, namely the costs for implementing a measure, are rarely considered. Cristóbal et al. (2018) further conclude there is only “limited knowledge on the evaluation of food waste prevention and management strategies including both economic and environmental dimensions” and that data on performance of measures is scarce.

To close this knowledge gap on the evaluation of measures, the present paper reviews the methodologies applied in literature for evaluating food waste prevention measures, focussing on a wide range of factors beyond food waste diversion potential. This is done through a three-step literature search and analysis. Firstly, information is gathered on the range of prevention measures currently being proposed in literature to tackle food waste. Secondly, the search is narrowed to those sources containing an evaluation of the proposed food waste measure(s). Finally, an assessment is made on how the evaluation has been performed in the respective studies. This paper thereto proposes an assessment framework with quantitative criteria against which the evaluation methodologies are assessed.

This paper hereby builds on and complements ongoing work of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste 1 , and more particularly the framework for evaluating food waste prevention measures that is currently being developed by the EU Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra ( EU FLW, 2017 ). The innovation in this paper therefore does not lay in the assessment framework proposed, but rather in providing an overview of recent advancements in literature and the state of art of the extent to which measures have been evaluated so far.

This paper was written within the context of the German ELoFoS research project on “Efficient Lowering of Food waste in the Out-of-home Sector” 2 . As such, focus is given to the food service or out-of-home (OoH) sector whereas other sectors along the food chain are investigated to a lesser extent. Nevertheless, as the paper focusses on methodologies for evaluating food waste prevention measures rather than the measures itself, the findings of this paper apply to all sectors along the chain.

Materials and Methods

Food waste definition and categorization of food waste measures.

The definition of food waste used within this paper follows the definition proposed by the European FUSIONS project: “Food waste is any food, and inedible parts of food, removed from the food supply chain to be recovered or disposed (including composted, crops plowed in/not harvested, anaerobic digestion, bio-energy production, co-generation, incineration, disposal to sewer, landfill or discarded to sea)” ( Östergren et al., 2014 ). The food supply chain hereby consists of a “connected series of activities used to produce, process, distribute and consume food,” starting with raw materials and products ready for harvest or slaughter ( Östergren et al., 2014 ), thus including those products that are in the end not harvested/slaughtered and for example left on the field.

Using this definition, food (or inedible parts of food) that is removed from the food supply chain and sent to animal feed, bio-material processing or other industrial uses is not considered as “food waste,” but as “valorization and conversion.”

Based on the definitional framework set out by Östergren et al. (2014) and the management hierarchy from Huber-Humer et al. (2017) , food waste measures are categorized as follows:

- Measures preventing food from becoming food waste:

° Category 1: Avoidance measures aimed at reduction of food surplus at source, such as avoiding food overproduction and avoiding purchasing more than what is needed;

° Category 2: Redistribution or donation measures such as redirecting food surplus to people in need;

° Category 3: Valorization or conversion of food and inedible parts of food removed from the food supply chain, such as redirecting food waste to the bio-based industry or to animal feed;

- Measures managing food waste:

° Category 4: Recycling (anaerobic digestion or composting) and recovery (energy recovery) of food and inedible parts of food removed from the food supply chain in order to avoid landfilling.

Literature Search

The literature search was conducted between September 2018 and February 2019 and comprised both searching gray literature as well as academic literature. The search was done using Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, Directory of Open Access Journals and Google (Scholar) search engines. For practical reasons, the academic literature search was conducted in English whereas the search for gray literature entailed publications in English and in German. No date restrictions were set.

Following the focus of the ELoFoS project, the literature search concentrates on developed regions and the OoH sector. Furthermore, this paper concentrates on those measures aimed at preventing food from leaving the food supply chain, namely avoidance measures (Category 1) and redistribution or donation measures (Category 2).

The methodology used for the literature search is based on the rapid review approach as a less time-consuming alternative to a systematic review. The search and subsequent analysis followed a three-step approach as illustrated in Figure 1 . Step 1 aimed at collecting measures dealing with food waste throughout the food chain, in order to get an insight in the measures that have been proposed in literature. In total, the search resulted in a collection of 88 sources (academic and gray literature) listing in total over 200 food waste prevention measures, with the majority of sources proposing or describing more than one measure. All found sources (with the exception of two studies) were published after 2010.

Figure 1 . Flowchart and outline of the literature search methodology.

Step 2 of the search narrowed the sources to those studies or reports containing an evaluation of implemented or proposed measures to prevent food waste. In total, 39 sources were retained containing some sort of evaluation of one single measure or of combined measures. Combined measures hereby refer to measures applied and evaluated simultaneously or grouped into for example a voluntary agreement or a large-scale campaign.

Of the 39 retained sources, 15 were peer reviewed journal articles, 2 referred to proceedings or presentations at a scientific congress, whereas the remainder are gray literature or reports (see also Supplementary Table S3 ). These 39 sources included the evaluation of in total 48 single and combined measures. For the evaluated (combined) measure(s), the following metadata was collected: life cycle stage or sector in focus, country and scale of application, and nature of evaluation results (measured vs. projected outcomes).

During Step 3 of the process, the methodologies and criteria used for evaluating food waste measures were put against a predefined framework for evaluating measures (as described in section Assessment Framework: Evaluation Criteria for Food Waste Measures). The assessment done hereby focussed on the methodologies used in literature, rather than on identifying the best performing measure. Additionally, no attempt was made to evaluate the measures ourselves; only readily available information on the performance of the food waste measures was collected. The evaluation assessment itself comprised looking at the extent to which each of the evaluation criteria was taken into account. A distinction is hereby made into (sets of combined) measures that have been implemented and for which outcomes were measured, and measures that have not been implemented but for which projected outcomes are given. In case the information available online did not allow for a conclusive answer on whether or not a certain criterion was assessed, this is indicated with a question mark (“?”). For practical reasons, these were later on in the analysis treated as “criterion not considered.”

Assessment Framework: Evaluation Criteria for Food Waste Measures

The assessment framework proposed within the context of this paper builds on publicly available information on the ongoing work within the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste ( EC-JRC, 2018a , b , 2019 ). The framework is based on three overarching quantitative criteria that need to be considered when evaluating food waste measures. The first criterion refers to the potential of a measure to reduce food waste: its effectiveness. Secondly the extent to which all three dimensions of sustainability have been taken into account is assessed: environmental impacts or savings brought about by the measure (such as emission savings), economic costs and benefits, and resulting social effects. Lastly, we look at how the efficiency of a measure is calculated.

Figure 2 provides for a schematic overview of the criteria and their sub-criteria; a detailed description of the framework is presented in the following sections.

Figure 2 . Assessment framework—Quantitative evaluation criteria for food waste prevention measures, inspired by the reporting template developed by the EU JRC within the context of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste.

Effectiveness or Food Waste Reduction Potential

The effectiveness of a measure or its potential to decrease food waste requires a quantification on a mass basis of food waste prevented ( Cristóbal et al., 2018 ). An assessment of methodologies for quantifying food waste is out of scope of this paper. Guidance on how to measure food waste can be found in the global Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting Standard developed by the Food Loss and Waste Protocol, which is a multi-stakeholder initiative ( WRI, 2016 ). A recent overview of existing methodologies for food waste accounting, as well as an identification of current challenges and opportunities can further be found in the studies from Caldeira et al. (2017) , Corrado and Sala (2018) , and Corrado et al. (2019) .

Sustainability Assessment

Secondly, the sustainability of a measure needs to be analyzed. This involves looking at the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, economic and social dimension).

Environmental dimension

Environmental impacts or savings arising from the implementation of a food waste prevention measure can be calculated using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. As food waste is being prevented, the embodied impacts associated with the food that is now no longer being wasted are avoided. These include all the impacts generated along the different stages of a product's life cycle. The further along the chain food is wasted, the higher its associated embodied impacts as these accumulate along the chain.

The prevention of food waste further means that the end-of-life (EoL) stage is being eliminated. The associated avoided disposal impact hereby depends on the formerly chosen waste management option ( FAO, 2013b ). These avoided impacts relate to both the waste collection as well as the waste treatment.

Note that for measures belonging to Category 3 (valorization/conversion) or Category 4 (recycling/recovery), the avoided disposal impacts would need to be complemented with other impacts related to what happens with food leaving the food chain. These measures are however out of scope of this paper.

Both the avoided embodied impacts as well as the avoided disposal impacts directly refer to the amount of food waste that is prevented or reduced. An additional source of environmental impacts relates to the implementation of the measure itself. This could refer to changes in logistics or transport (related to for example food redistribution to charities), changes in electricity or water usage, changes in use of packaging or additional use of paper for leaflets and brochures.

Economic dimension

In line with the approach taken in the environmental dimension, food waste prevention measures need to be assessed based on the avoided economic embodied costs, the avoided disposal costs and the implementation costs or savings.

The avoided economic value or embodied cost of food can be determined using the commodity price of a product. Commodity or market prices incorporate the (overhead) costs borne by several actors along the food chain up until the moment of sale, complemented with a certain percentage of profit gain (mark-up) between each of the actors along the chain. In the case of restaurants for example, menu prices are based on the procurement price of each ingredient complemented with operational costs (such as energy and water use, waste management, and cleaning) and personnel costs for preparing and cooking the food. Along the same lines, retail prices incorporate operational and personnel costs borne by a supermarket. As each stage adds up to the cost of food, commodity prices go up as the product moves further along the food supply chain with lowest prices at grower level and highest prices at the end of the supply chain ( Teuber and Jensen, 2016 ; Bellemare et al., 2017 ). Both menu prices and retail prices however also include a mark-up charged by the restaurant or seller in order to make profit. As a result, using menu and retail prices to estimate the value of food gone wasted, leads to an overestimation of its value ( Bellemare et al., 2017 ).

The avoided costs for food waste disposal include costs for waste sorting (such as removing bad and spoiled produce in supermarkets), waste collection and treatment, as well as all related administrative costs.

In 2013, WRAP (2013d) calculated “the true cost of food waste” in the UK hospitality sector. Food purchasing prices were found to contribute 52.2% to the total cost of food waste. The second largest contributors were labor costs for kitchen staff associated with preparation and cooking of meals (37.4%). Other cost elements referred to energy and water use for preparation and cooking of meals (excl. fixed costs such as energy costs for lighting, water costs for cleaning the restaurant), waste management, and transport costs associated with the collection of food supplies.

Another approach to calculate the costs associated with the food that is no longer being wasted (and its avoided disposal), is the Life Cycle Costing (LCC) approach which takes into account all costs associated with a product or service over its entire life cycle. Next to the obvious costs related to raw materials acquisition, manufacturing and distribution, LCC considers operating and labor costs, research expenditures and waste collection and disposal costs as well, thereby also including foreseeable costs in the future ( Hunkeler et al., 2008 ; Kim et al., 2011 ; Swarr et al., 2011 ; Asselin-Balençon and Jolliet, 2014 ; Martinez-Sanchez et al., 2015 ; De Menna et al., 2016 , 2018 ). This approach is particularly important in case of Category 3 and 4 measures to fully account for by-products such as animal feed, compost, and electricity.

The third cost item refers to the implementation costs and savings associated with the food waste measure itself, covering both fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs for example include investments in new technologies or materials, investments in new logistics, expenses for printing leaflets and brochures at the start of a campaign, or expenses for personnel training. Variable costs or savings on the other hand refer to changes in daily or continuous activities such as time spent for food production, time spent for waste administration, personnel hours, daily campaign costs, or changes in electricity and water usage.

Social dimension

Next to the environmental and economic effects, there may also be social effects. Redistribution of food waste to food charities for example results in a number of meals given to people. As such, the number of meals saved and subsequently donated can serve as a social indicator.

Another indicator relates to the opportunities for job creation brought about by food waste measures. New jobs may be created in the life cycle stage where food waste is being prevented, as well as in other sectors or stages along the food chain where the food is being reused, recovered, or recycled, such as in food charities or food recycling.

Finally, the efficiency of a measure needs to be calculated using the indicators mentioned above. Evaluating the efficiency of a measure can be done by putting the costs of a measure against its economic benefits, against its waste diversion potential (the amount of food waste that was reduced or prevented), or against the resulting ecological savings such as avoided emissions ( Teuber and Jensen, 2016 ; Cristóbal et al., 2018 ).

Economic or monetary efficiency

The most common methods to calculate the efficiency of a measure are the benefit-cost ratio and the net benefits. The benefit-cost ratio is obtained through division of the benefits resulting from the implementation of a measure by the costs it took to get there ( Investopedia, 2018 ). The net benefits on the other hand are obtained by subtracting the costs from the benefits.

The investment payback period refers to the amount of time it takes to recover the cost of an investment. The return on investment (ROI) can be calculated by dividing the net benefits by the costs, and expressing this ratio as a percentage ( Investopedia, 2019a , b ).

For these calculations, only monetary data is taken into account. As such, there are no clear linkages to the food waste reduction volumes or to the ecological savings resulting from food waste reductions. However, if these reduced food waste volumes or ecological savings are expressed in monetary values (such as the economic retail value of food no longer gone wasted or the economic value of the avoided emissions), these could be included in the benefits obtained through the implementation of a food waste measure.

Food waste efficiency, ecological efficiency and social efficiency

The cost for reducing 1 ton of food waste or for abating 1 ton of carbon emissions (CO 2 eq.) through a specific measure is calculated through the ratio of the costs of this measure to its food waste reduction potential or emission savings. The most preferable measures would then be those with the lowest per unit cost for food waste reduction or for emission abatement.

A marginal abatement cost (MAC) curve facilitates the visualization of the efficiency of different measures and, more specifically, of these measures with the greatest cost efficiency in terms of reducing food waste volumes or abating carbon emissions. It is based on the costs for reducing 1 ton of food waste or 1 ton of carbon emissions as it plots the cost of each of the measures against the cumulative amount of waste saved by the various measures. The waste diversion or emissions abatement potential of each measure is hereby visualized ( Defra, 2012 ; ReFED, 2016a ).

Along the same lines as ecological or food waste efficiency, social efficiency of for example a donation measure can be calculated as the cost for donating 1 meal.

In line with the benefit-cost ratio for monetary efficiency, one could also calculate how much food waste can be reduced, how much emissions can be abated or how many meals can be donated for each euro or dollar put in.

Food Waste Measures and Their Evaluation in Literature

During Step 1 of the literature search, a wide range of measures was found, covering the various players and actors along the food chain from primary production, over storage and processing, retail and wholesale to private consumers and OoH consumption. Supplementary Table S1 gives an overview of over 200 collected measures. To deal with the multitude of measures and/or descriptions of measures found, measures were organized and grouped based on the main theme or aspect the measures focus on. The “Food service—Portion sizes and side dishes” group for example (see group 61 in Supplementary Table S1 ) contains measures related to adapting portion sizes to target groups, offering smaller portion sizes, offering customers to choose their side dishes, and providing bread or butter on demand. The grouping of the many measures found in literature resulted in 75 groups of measures: 73 groups of avoidance measures and 2 groups of redistribution/donation measures.

Supplementary Table S1 further lists which actors or sectors are, according to their literature sources, involved in each measure. Since this paper focusses on methodologies for evaluating measures rather than on evaluating the measures itself, no further analysis of the measures obtained through this exercise is done.

Step 2 of the literature search resulted in a list of 48 measures for which an evaluation could be found, as shown in Table 1 . Following the focus of this paper, those measures identified in Step 1 of the literature search for which no evaluation could be found, are not considered any further. The practical and academic interventions included in Table 1 widely differ in scale: whereas some measures were applied at society level, others were applied within one single company. Furthermore, some of the measures listed in the table, refer to a combined measures applied and evaluated simultaneously or grouped into for example a voluntary agreement or a large-scale campaign, whereas others refer to a single intervention.

Table 1 . Use of evaluation criteria in literature—Summarizing table: Degree to which effectiveness (food waste reduction), sustainability (environmental, economic and social dimension), and efficiency are considered or calculated when evaluating food waste prevention measures.

Out of the 48 (combined) measures, 25 refer to implemented single and combined measures. The other 23 cases concern single interventions that have been proposed but have not necessarily been implemented and for which the evaluation data refers to projected (not measured) food waste reductions, complemented with foreseen (not measured) environmental, economic, and social impacts where applicable.

The last few years have seen a wide range of (proposed) food waste measures, especially in the UK. Many interventions were part of (or followed from) the UK “Love Food hate Waste” campaign set up by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) or from voluntary agreements with the retail sector (“the Courtauld Commitment”) or with the hospitality and food service (HaFS) sector (“HaFS Agreement”). Many of these measures have been evaluated and a wide range of case studies can be found on the WRAP website. In the US, the multi-stakeholder group ReFED (“Rethink Food Waste through Economics and Data”) was set up in 2015 to tackle food waste. In 2016, they presented “A Roadmap to Reduce US Food Waste by 20%” entailing 27 single solutions (12 avoidance, 7 redistribution, and 8 recycling/recovery) together with their projected outcomes for each individual proposed measure ( ReFED, 2016a ).

It can be noted that many of the evaluations found, concern interventions taking place in the UK and in the US. One important reason being the fact that the literature search was conducted in English. This does however not mean that non-English speaking countries have not evaluated food waste measures. It may merely be that these are to a lesser extent documented in English.

Assessment of Use of Evaluation Criteria in Literature

Step 3 of the literature search involved looking at the extent to which the various evaluation criteria contained in the assessment framework as visualized in Figure 2 are considered and calculated in literature.

Figure 3 summarizes the number of single and combined measures for which effectiveness, sustainability across the three dimensions and efficiency have been evaluated. Results are given for both the implemented measures with measured outcomes as well as for proposed measures with projected outcomes.

Figure 3 . Number of (combined) measures for which effectiveness, sustainability across the three dimensions and efficiency has been evaluated. Overall, 25 implemented single and combined measures, and 23 single proposed measures with projected outcomes are assessed.

Table 1 provides for a schematic summary of the findings for each (combined) measure assessed. These findings are discussed in the next sections; more details on the actual methodology applied in literature for evaluating each (combined) measure, as well as the associated results, can be found in Supplementary Table S2 .

It should be noted that all 12 avoidance measures and all 7 donation measures proposed within the ReFED Roadmap are evaluated according to the same methodology when it comes to foreseen food waste reductions, and foreseen environmental, economic, and social effects. As such, the avoidance and donation are taken up together in two single lines in Table 1 , whereas in the analysis they count as 19 separate measures with different projected outcomes.

Effectiveness

For 47 out of 48 (combined) measures listed in Table 1 , an assessment was made of the effectiveness of an intervention, thereby quantifying (projected) food waste reductions. The only measure for which no actual data on food waste reductions was given (even though it seems it was monitored), is the implemented measure using a so-called “Bin-Cam” which captures and shares images of waste on an online platform ( Thieme et al., 2012 ; Comber and Thieme, 2013 ). Focus of this measure was assessing impacts on awareness and self-reflection, as well as analyzing social influences rather than actual food waste accounting.

Sustainability Across Three Dimensions

Figures 4 , 5 show the number of single and combined measures for which environmental aspects are considered during the evaluation. Figure 4 hereby focusses on each sub-criterion on itself, whereas Figure 5 focusses on the combination of sub-criteria assessed simultaneously.

Figure 4 . Consideration of environmental aspects in the evaluation of food waste prevention measures: number of single and combined measures for which avoided embodied or product-related impacts (p), avoided disposal impacts (d), and implementation impacts (i) are assessed.

Figure 5 . Consideration of environmental aspects in the evaluation of food waste prevention measures: number of single and combined measures for which avoided embodied or product-related impacts (p), avoided disposal impacts (d), and implementation impacts (i) are simultaneously assessed.

The literature search has shown that for 16 out of 25 (combined) implemented measures, and for 1 out of 23 proposed measures, no environmental assessment whatsoever was conducted. The (expected) embodied impacts of the food that no longer goes wasted was calculated for the other 9 implemented and 22 proposed measures. For four implemented measures, the environmental savings related to avoided disposal were also taken into account, next to the embodied impacts. For the proposed measures, this was the case for 20 measures.

Only four cases consider environmental impacts directly or indirectly resulting from the implementation of measures. In three cases, implementation impacts related to electricity use from fridges or freezers were considered next to the embodied emissions of food no longer wasted. This concerns foreseen changes in electricity use from reducing storage temperature of refrigerated items and placing additional items in household fridges ( WRAP, 2013b , 2015 ; Brown et al., 2014b ), foreseen changes from freezing food by households to be consumed later on ( Brown et al., 2014a ), or changes in electricity use from reducing storage temperature at retail level ( Eriksson et al., 2016 ). Avoided disposal was not assessed in these cases.

Only one case, the “Fruta Feia” co-op in Lisbon (Portugal) which buys “ugly” produce form farmers and sells it to consumers, takes into account all three impact elements. The implementation impacts hereby consider additional transport for bringing the ugly produce from the farm to a consumer delivery point, as well as the production of bags and baskets used for distribution ( Ribeiro et al., 2018 ).

Economic costs or benefits

The literature search has shown that 9 out of 25 implemented measures did not take into account any economic aspect in their evaluation; the proposed measures with projected outcomes all performed some kind of economic evaluation ( Figure 6 ).

Figure 6 . Consideration of economic aspects in the evaluation of food waste prevention measures: number of single and combined measures for which avoided embodied or product-related costs (p), avoided disposal costs (d), and implementation costs (i) are assessed.

In 37 of the (combined) implemented and proposed measures, the cost or value of the food that no longer ends up in the bin has been calculated. This is mainly done based on market prices at producer or retail level; the exception being the proposed donation solution from the ReFED Roadmap for which the expected value of saved and donated food is based on data from the US food banks network “Feeding America.”

For six implemented (combined) measures and one proposed measure with projected outcomes, the (expected) avoided costs for waste disposal were also taken into account next to avoided embodied costs ( Figure 7 ). Note that the ReFED roadmap only considers expected avoided disposal costs for recycling/recovery solutions, not for avoidance or donation measures ( ReFED, 2016a ); hence the “–” in Table 1 .

Figure 7 . Consideration of economic aspects in the evaluation of food waste prevention measures: number of single and combined measures for which avoided embodied or product-related costs (p), avoided disposal costs (d), and implementation costs (i) are simultaneously assessed.

Costs or benefits directly or indirectly resulting from the implementation of measures have been considered in in total 33 (combined) measures. These refer to investments in logistics, website and computer hardware and recurring costs for transport and personnel ( Ribeiro et al., 2018 ); (expected) additional costs for electricity use from better use of fridges at household ( WRAP, 2013b , 2015 ; Brown et al., 2014b ) or retail level ( Eriksson et al., 2016 ); expected additional costs for electricity resulting from freezing food in households to be consumed later on ( Brown et al., 2014a ); campaign costs for the “Love Food Hate Waste” campaign in the UK ( WRAP, 2015 ; Hanson and Mitchell, 2017 ) and for the “Food: Too Good to Waste” campaign in the US ( EPA, 2016 ); expected packaging costs for novel portion packs for fresh meat ( WRAP, 2015 ); time spent for trimming second grade vegetables in commercial kitchens ( Lynnerup, 2016 ); time spent for weighting food waste using a smart scale in a business cafeteria ( City of Hillsboro, 2010 ); cost for using smart scales for measuring food waste in restaurants, hotels and catering businesses, as well as other equipment costs, costs for staff training and consulting, and costs associated with menu redesign ( Clowes et al., 2018a , b , 2019 ); personnel savings from mobile catering in hospitals ( Snels and Wassenaar, 2011 ); costs for recovery of food fit for consumption from supermarkets and redistribution to charity ( Cicatiello et al., 2016 ); and projected initial capital expenditures and annual operating expenses throughout the US society and businesses for all 19 prevention interventions proposed within the ReFED Roadmap ( ReFED, 2016a ).

Only in a limited number of cases all three cost elements of a (combined) measure were considered. This is the case for the evaluation of the UK “Love Food Hate Waste” campaign ( WRAP, 2015 ; Hanson and Mitchell, 2017 ) and the three Champions 12.3 publications entailing various measures and stressing the financial business case for reducing food waste and losses in restaurants, catering, and hotels ( Clowes et al., 2018a , b , 2019 ).

Social impacts

Social effects have been considered in only nine cases.

When it comes to implemented measures, a social life cycle assessment was performed for the Portuguese “Fruta Feia” project that commercializes imperfect produce. The assessment includes the project's contribution to local employment and community engagement, revenue for local farmers, staff working hours, and the possibility for consumers to buy produce at low prices. Finally, its awareness raising effect is mentioned, resulting in project replication in other regions ( Ribeiro et al., 2018 ). Cicatiello et al. (2016) recovered food waste in supermarkets by redistributing food that is still perfectly fit for consumption to charity. Based on the amounts of food recovered, the authors calculated the number of full meals and dessert and bread portions that could be prepared on a daily basis.

When it comes to proposed measures with projected outcomes, the ReFED roadmap calculates the projected number of meals to be recovered for each of the seven donation measures proposed in the roadmap. Additionally, the Roadmap lists the expected number of jobs that will be created for three out of seven donation measures ( ReFED, 2016a ).

Efficiency calculations were only performed for 8 out of 25 implemented (combined) measures ( Figure 8 ), even though in some cases the data needed to perform such calculations was available. For proposed measures with projected outcomes, efficiency was calculated in all but two cases.

Figure 8 . Consideration of efficiency in the evaluation of food waste prevention measures: number of single and combined measures for which economic or monetary (m), food waste (fw), ecological (e) or social (s) efficiency are simultaneously assessed.

The investment pay-back period for the Portuguese “Fruta feia” project has been calculated, and this for two scenarios, namely in case of one or three consumer delivery points ( Ribeiro et al., 2018 ). Additionally, the authors calculated the Social Return on Investment (SROI) to assess the project's contribution to society by monetizing the economic, environmental and social value created. Carbon emissions were hereby assigned a value of €52.7 per ton CO 2 . The SROI was found to be positive at all times. Thus, for every €1 invested, the social value generation is higher than €1.

Net (expected) benefits resulting from the value of foods no longer being wasted and additional costs from electricity use by fridges or freezers were calculated at household ( WRAP, 2013b , 2015 ; Brown et al., 2014a , b ) and retail level ( Eriksson et al., 2016 ). Net benefits were further also calculated for use of second grade vegetables in commercial kitchens, based on the price of the raw products and the time spent for trimming these second grade vegetables ( Lynnerup, 2016 ).

The benefit-cost ratio was applied for evaluating the Love Food Hate Waste (LFHW) campaign in the UK ( WRAP, 2015 ; Hanson and Mitchell, 2017 ). Benefits hereby referred to avoided disposal costs for local authorities and savings for households in terms of avoiding throwing away food (embodied economic retail value of food that is no longer wasted). Costs on the other hand, referred to the costs of the campaign itself, namely all expenditures by WRAP, local authorities, Courtauld Commitment signatories, and community groups. Based on this approach, they concluded that every £1 spent by the public and private sector contributed to over £250 of savings. Ecological efficiency was not calculated even though environmental impact savings calculations were made.

The benefit-cost ratio was also applied in the Champions 12.3 publications on the business case for reducing food waste and loss by hotels, catering and restaurants ( Clowes et al., 2018a , b , 2019 ). On average, every $1 spent in hotels and restaurants, realized a return of $7. In the catering business, the average return was found to be $6. Based on these data, the Return on Investment (ROI) was calculated as well as the investment payback period. Within 2 years, 95% of the hotels, 80% of the catering companies and 89% of the restaurants had their investments paid back. Since the ecological savings brought about by the food waste measures were not calculated in the first place, no linkage could be made to the ecological efficiency of the measures in each sector.

In its case study to recover food waste from an Italian supermarket and redistribute it to charity, Cicatiello et al. (2016) calculated the efficiency of the intervention by putting the investment costs against the value of the food recovered. For each € 1 invested in the project, about € 4.6 worth of food could be donated.

Based on the upfront and operating expenses (costs) and the cost savings and revenues (benefits) associated with each solution, ReFED (2016a) calculated the expected annual net economic value associated with each of the 19 proposed avoidance and donation solutions put forward. Combining these 19 prevention solutions with the 8 proposed recycling/recovery solutions, ReFED states that with a $18 billion investment, the Roadmap is expected to yield $100 billion in societal Economic Value over a decade ( ReFED, 2016a ).

Food waste efficiency, ecological efficiency, and social efficiency

Specific calculations indicating food waste efficiency in terms of costs per kilogram of food waste prevented tend to be missing even though the needed data was often available. The only exception is the ReFED roadmap which, based on per unit costs, visualizes the waste diversion potential of all solutions under study (including recycling/recovery solutions) using a MAC curve. The curve “ranks all 27 solutions based on their cost-effectiveness, or societal Economic Value generated per ton of waste reduced, while also visualizing the total diversion potential of each solution” ( ReFED, 2016a ).

In none of the cases, ecological efficiency was calculated. Following monetization of the emission savings, the study on the Fruta Feia project did however incorporate ecological impacts into its monetary efficiency calculations ( Ribeiro et al., 2018 ).

Similarly, none of the cases calculated social efficiency even though it is implicitly taken on board by Cicatiello et al. (2016) through its monetary efficiency calculations stating that each euro invested resulted in €4.6 worth of food being donated.

Multi-objective or pareto optimization

Cristóbal et al. (2018) propose a novel methodology, based on LCA and mathematical programming, to visualize efficiency and help decision makers identify the most preferable measure. The model involves multi-objective optimization (or Pareto optimization) of environmental and economic objectives. Taken into consideration are the economic costs associated with each measure, the total budget available for reducing food waste, and the total environmental impacts that can be avoided by implementing the measure (and thus by reducing food waste). The model aims at maximizing environmental savings while constraining the costs of the measures within the limited budget available. Afterwards, a Pareto front can be obtained whereby each point in the Pareto front or graph corresponds to a different combination of measures that for each budget maximizes the total environmental impact avoided.

Using a selection of the 27 solutions mentioned in the ReFED roadmap, Cristóbal et al. (2018) performed a multi-objective optimization of the total environmental impact avoided (TEIA) by each measure within the constraints of a specific budget. Doing so, the authors identified which actions to prioritize for obtaining the highest TEIA, and this for 16 scenarios with each a specific budget available.

Main Findings

The present paper has shown that a wide range of measures and activities is being proposed, both at scientific as well as at practical level, and this for all stages and actors along the food chain. In total, over 200 measures were identified through the first step of the literature search.

The second step of the second literature search showed that only for a limited number of measures, an evaluation was conducted. The measures for which an evaluation was available refer to both single measures (such as monitoring of food waste in a commercial kitchen) as well as combined actions (such as voluntary agreements or large-scale campaigns). Based on the analysis made, it seems that not all measures found during Step 1 of the literature search have been evaluated. However, this paper is based on the rapid review approach as a less time-consuming alternative to a systematic review. This resulted in non-exhaustive lists of proposed and/or evaluated food waste measures which may not capture the full spectrum of measures (and their evaluations) being available in literature. Additionally, due to language restrictions in the literature search, the results are biased toward measures and their evaluations published in English (and German). As such, no statements can be made at this point on the percentage of measures for which an evaluation has been conducted.

In total, evaluations were found for 48 (combined) measures with 25 of them referring to implemented measures and 23 to proposed measures with projected outcomes. The collected evaluations all include information on the food waste reductions achieved by the measure applied or proposed, with the exception of one measure for which monitoring of food waste reductions seemed to be present but for which no data was published.

For the purpose of this paper, no analysis was made whether or not targets were set for each (combined) measure and to what extent these targets were (or will be) achieved.

Sustainability: Environmental Dimension

When it comes to environmental evaluation of measures, avoided embodied impacts associated with food waste reductions were considered in 65% of the cases and avoided disposal impacts were calculated in 50% of the cases. Implementation impacts on the other hand were only regarded in 8% of the cases. There are however differences in how implemented and proposed measures are evaluated. In case of implemented measures, avoided embodied impacts are only assessed in 36% of the (combined) measures whereas this percentage goes up to 96% in the case of proposed measures. Similarly, avoided disposal impacts are assessed in 16% of the implemented measures and 87% of the proposed measures. Consideration of implementation impacts is comparable with 8% for implemented measures and 9% for proposed measures.

In total, only four cases considered environmental implementation impacts. We could however expect (minor) changes in environmental impacts for other measures as well in case for example operational parameters such as water and electricity use change, in case more or other packaging is applied to increase shelf life or improve portioning, or in case food is donated to charity requiring additional transport.

The lower share of implemented measures having received an environmental evaluation as compared to the proposed measures may indicate that making projections for foreseen impact reductions is easier than actually measuring and calculating impact savings for implemented measures in practice.

Looking at the combinations of environmental evaluation criteria simultaneously considered and thus at the completeness of the environmental evaluation performed, only one study had a complete environmental evaluation whereby all three environmental impact elements (product-related, avoided disposal and implementation impacts) were assessed. For 30 (combined) measures, only one or two out of the three environmental impact elements were considered (incomplete evaluation), whereas for 17 (combined) measures, the environmental assessment was missing as a whole (evaluation missing).

Sustainability: Economic Dimension

More information was found for economic costs and benefits associated with food waste measures. In 77% of the cases, the economic value of the food that is no longer being thrown away is calculated; avoided disposal costs are calculated in 15% of the cases. Specific costs associated with the implementation of measure(s) are assessed in 69% of the collected (combined) measures. We hereby note that for two of these cases, these were the only costs provided as embodied cost savings or savings from avoided waste disposal were not taken up.

Here as well, discrepancies are found in how implemented measures are evaluated as compared to proposed measures with projected outcomes. For both avoided embodied costs and implementation costs, a lower share of the implemented measures take into account these sub-criteria in their evaluation (respectively 77 and 69% as compared to twice 96% for the proposed measures). The avoided disposal costs on the other hand are more frequently addressed in the evaluation of implemented measures (24% as compared to only 4% for proposed measures) as none of the 19 prevention solutions in the ReFED roadmap takes this into consideration.

Looking at the completeness of each economic evaluation, four implemented measures were evaluated using all three economic cost elements (product-related, avoided disposal, and implementation costs), resulting in a complete evaluation. For 12 implemented and all 23 proposed measures, one or two out of three cost elements were taken into account (incomplete evaluation), whereas for nine implemented measures, the economic evaluation was missing as a whole.

In general, the “implementation costs and impacts” sub-criterion is more frequently considered in the economic evaluation than it is in the environmental evaluation. Unfortunately, our literature search did not allow for drawing conclusions on the reason behind this. One explanation may be that the (expected) environmental impacts associated with the implementation of a specific measure are harder to calculate than the economic ones. It may however also be that practitioners are less aware of the importance of including this factor in their evaluation.

Sustainability: Social Dimension

Only nine measures considered social effects, reporting job creation, number of meals saved through donation, or a combination of both.

Many studies omitted efficiency calculations even though the necessary data was available. Economic or monetary efficiency was calculated in 60% of the collected (combined) measures, mostly by calculating net benefits or the benefit-cost ratio. Again, the share of implemented measures for which monetary efficiency was calculated (32%) was lower than the share of proposed measures (91%).

None of the studies under research calculated ecological or social efficiency.

Food waste efficiency on the other hand was calculated in the ReFED roadmap, with results for all solutions being visualized in a MAC curve. This results in 40% of all measures considering this criterion, or 83% of the proposed measures (and 0% of the implemented measures).

One study provided for a novel approach in optimizing avoided environmental impacts and measure implementation costs within budget constraints using Pareto optimization.

Framework for Evaluating Food Waste Actions and Selection of Evaluation Criteria

Quantitative criteria.

The evaluation criteria considered in the present paper are limited to quantitative criteria such as effectiveness, sustainability across three dimensions, and efficiency. Both effectiveness and sustainability across three dimensions are also taken up in the JRC reporting template for evaluating food waste prevention measures under the overarching heading of the evaluation criterion “efficiency” ( EC-JRC, 2018a , b ). It is not clear if specific efficiency calculations as considered within the context of the present paper are also to be reported within the JRC reporting template. The JRC template further includes the additional aspect of “outreach impact” as one of the sub-criteria for assessing efficiency of measures ( EC-JRC, 2018a , b ).

Qualitative Evaluation Criteria Complementing Quantitative Criteria

The JRC reporting template further includes the following qualitative and descriptive criteria: quality of the action design (problem identification; setting of aims, objectives, and key performance indicators; implementation plan), sustainability over time (continuity of the action; long term strategic plans), transferability and scalability (ability to be transferred from one place/situation to another; ability to grow or to be made larger), and inter-sectorial cooperation ( EC-JRC, 2018a , b , 2019 ).

The assessment performed in the context of this paper focussed on quantitative criteria for evaluating food waste prevention measures. Some evaluations found in literature however also included qualitative aspects complementing or replacing quantitative data. In their evaluation of measures addressing food waste in schools for example, Schmidt et al. (2018) indicated the estimated time, labor, and costs that go with a selection of measures as well as staff willingness to implement these measures. Expenses, costs, or willingness to implement the measure are hereby expressed as “low,” “average,” or “high.” In 2018, ReFED published a food waste action guide specifically targeted to the restaurant sector ( ReFED, 2018 ). The guide includes a “Restaurant Solution Matrix” helping restaurants prioritize solutions based on a combination of profit potential and feasibility of each measure. Profit potential refers to the net annual business benefits and/or cost savings of a given solution, thereby excluding initial investments. Feasibility combines the level of effort (e.g., the behavior, systems, and process changes required) with the initial financial capital needed to implement a solution ( ReFED, 2018 ). The resulting feasibility matrix thus links quantitative data to qualitative data.

Such qualitative data sheds light on existing barriers for implementation and thus provides valuable information for transferring and upscaling measures addressing food waste.

Singling Out Effects

The evaluation of food waste measures is often hampered by the fact that it can be hard to single out the effects of one specific measure, as also pointed out in literature ( Stöckli et al., 2018a , b ). Multiple interventions are often ongoing at the same time, making it hard to say how much of the food waste reduction is attributable to each specific measure. This paper also identified various combined measures (with some of them being implemented together as a package), for which evaluations were done for all measures together as a whole.

The 19 promising prevention measures proposed within the ReFED Roadmap are evaluated on an individual basis, and projected outcomes are given for each measure. In practice however, it may be harder to isolate the effects of each individual measure as other (possibly less promising) measures may be applied at the same time.

Additionally, there might be societal influences. For its evaluation of the Love Food Hate Waste (LFHW) campaign for example, WRAP (2015) stressed that, next to the campaign, also deep recession and rapidly rising food prices contributed to lowering food waste during the period of evaluation.

Rebound Effect and Market Feedback Links

Next to the direct impacts and costs, some less visible or indirect feedback mechanisms take place when implementing food waste prevention measures. The first one is “the rebound effect.” The prevention of food waste in households for example, might result in less money being spent on purchasing food. The money that becomes available can then be spent on other goods or services. The way it is spent, will greatly affect the environmental benefits from preventing the food ending up as waste. In case the money is spent on more environmentally damaging food and non-food products and/or services, the final benefits from food waste reduction are offset, which is called the rebound effect ( Rutten et al., 2013 ; Bernstad Saraiva Schott and Cánovas, 2015 ; WRAP, 2015 ; Martinez-Sanchez et al., 2016 ; Teuber and Jensen, 2016 ; Beretta et al., 2017 ; Salemdeeb et al., 2017 ; Cristóbal et al., 2018 ; Wunder et al., 2019 ).

A second issue relates to market feedback links: as food waste prevention measures affect the demand side for food, also the interactions between demand and supply will be affected, thereby having its repercussions on the entire food market system ( Britz et al., 2014 ). These aspects could also be considered when evaluating measures. The present paper did however not look into whether existing evaluations of food waste measures included rebound effects or market feedback links. The JRC reporting template does not consider these criteria either.

Way Forward

To get an insight in ongoing measures, the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste (see above) asked its members and other relevant stakeholders to provide information on existing food waste prevention activities ( EU FLW, 2017 ). Using its reporting template for evaluating food waste measures, the EU JRC is currently evaluating the collected information ( EU FLW, 2017 ; EC-JRC, 2018a ). The present paper complements ongoing work at EU level by providing information on the quantitative evaluation of food waste measures (applied within the EU and beyond) available in literature, and more specifically by providing information on the evaluation methodologies applied hitherto.

This paper concludes that there is a great variety in how measures are evaluated in literature. Additionally, in many cases, economic, environmental, or social assessments are incomplete or missing, and efficiency is only seldom calculated. This hampers practitioners and decision-makers to compare food waste interventions, identify trade-offs and prioritize actions. A more aligned approach on which evaluation criteria to consider and how to calculate the associated indicators would give more insight in which actions are most promising. Moreover, more complete information on the effectiveness and efficiency of measures would make incentives for reducing food waste at various levels along the food chain more visible.

To facilitate the evaluation of food waste measures in the future, it is important to determine essential evaluation criteria and how these should be assessed, ideally before the implementation of a measure. This is exactly what the JRC reporting template is working toward to ensure that, from the early start on, the right data can be gathered at the right time, thereby avoiding data gaps.

A reflection on the various evaluation criteria across the different dimensions (effectiveness, efficiency, scalability…) at the very beginning of the development of food waste actions may create greater awareness by those in charge of defining and implementing measures. This in turn might already result in more effective and efficient measures as practitioners might pursue to perform well in all domains, whereas before, they might have only focused on for example the economic benefits of a measure.

This paper therefore calls for a thorough evaluation of proposed and implemented measures tackling food waste, using a harmonized approach based on an agreed set of evaluation criteria. The authors welcome the developments at EU level, in particular the JRC reporting template, and hope both practitioners and researchers will follow or be inspired by this approach to successfully contribute to a reduction of food waste along the entire chain.

Author Contributions

YG performed the literature search and subsequent analysis, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. AW and TS contributed to conception and design of the study, as well as to redrafting the manuscript during the review process. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.

This paper was written within the context of the German ELoFoS research project on Efficient Lowering of Food waste in the Out-of-home Sector. The project ELoFoS was supported by funds of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) based on a decision of the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany via the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) under the innovation support programme (funding number 281A103416).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00090/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: food waste, prevention, measure, evaluation, performance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability

Citation: Goossens Y, Wegner A and Schmidt T (2019) Sustainability Assessment of Food Waste Prevention Measures: Review of Existing Evaluation Practices. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 3:90. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2019.00090

Received: 04 July 2019; Accepted: 23 September 2019; Published: 10 October 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Goossens, Wegner and Schmidt. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Yanne Goossens, yanne.goossens@thuenen.de

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Food Waste Research

On this page:

Why research food waste?

• From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste
• From Field to Bin: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste Management Pathways

Quantifying Methane Emissions from Landfilled Food Waste

Emerging issues in food waste management, food waste prevention and reduction, food waste processing, food waste management.

Wasted food is a major global environmental, social, and economic challenge. According to scientific research, approximately one-third of the food produced in the U.S. is never eaten. When food is produced but unnecessarily wasted, all the resources used to grow the food – water, energy, fertilizers – and the resources used to transport it from farms to our tables, are wasted as well. Most of the resource inputs and environmental impacts of food waste occur during production, processing, and delivery to our kitchens. When food is deposited in a landfill and decomposes, the byproducts of that decomposition process are methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat and contributes to climate change. EPA estimated that in the United States in 2018, more food was sent to landfills than any other single material in our everyday trash ( EPA Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures ).

• EPA Sustainable Management of Food
• Composting Resources
• Funding Opportunities and EPA Programs Related to the Food System
• EPA Anaerobic Digestion
• U.S. 2030 Food Loss and Waste Reduction Goal

In 2015, EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) established a national goal to halve food loss and waste by 2030. Through the sustainable management of food, we can help businesses and consumers save money, provide a bridge in our communities for those who do not have enough to eat, prevent pollution, and conserve resources. Research and development of new science-based solutions are essential to meeting these goals. Below are examples of EPA research to reduce food waste and improve its management.

From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste (Part 1)

EPA prepared the report, From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste, to inform domestic policymakers, researchers, and the public about the environmental footprint of food loss and waste in the U.S. and the environmental benefits that can be achieved by reducing U.S. food loss and waste. It focuses primarily on five inputs to the U.S. cradle-to-consumer food supply chain -- agricultural land use, water use, application of pesticides and fertilizers, and energy use -- plus one environmental impact -- green house gas emissions.

Read the report:  From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste .

From Field to Bin: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste Management Pathways (Part 2)

EPA prepared the report, From Field to Bin: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste Pathways, to investigate the environmental impacts and contributions to a circular economy of eleven common pathways to manage wasted food – from source reduction to composting to landfill.   The report presents a new ranking of the wasted food pathways, from most to least environmentally preferable. Wasted food is generated all along the food supply chain, and thus the audience for this report includes a broad range of stakeholders from farms to food businesses to households to waste managers, as well as policymakers seeking advice on how to reduce the environmental impacts of wasted food.  This report completes the analysis that began in the Part 1 report, From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste. Together, these two reports provide a better understanding of the net environmental footprint of U.S. food waste.

Read the report: From Field to Bin: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste Management Pathways

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that affects the earth’s temperature and climate system. Municipal solid waste landfills are the third largest source of methane emissions in the United States. Methane emitted from landfills results from the decaying of organic waste over time under anaerobic (i.e., without oxygen) conditions. To understand the impact of landfilled food waste, a portion of organic waste, has on these emissions, EPA developed the report, Quantifying Methane Emissions from Landfilled Food Waste. The analysis estimates the amount of methane emissions released into the atmosphere from decaying food waste in landfills from 1990 to 2020. This is the first published modeled estimates of annual methane emissions from landfilled food waste. Results of the analysis can inform actions to reduce the amount of wasted food being disposed of in landfills and consequently, the methane emitted.

Read the report: Quantifying Methane Emissions from Landfilled Food Waste

EPA encourages the recycling of food waste for several reasons. Recycling food waste can reduce methane emissions from landfills, and it can recover valuable nutrients and energy from food waste. However, there are concerns about the levels of plastic and persistent chemical contaminants, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), in food waste streams. Food waste streams consist of food and other items (such as compostable food packaging) that get collected – intentionally and unintentionally – for composting or anaerobic digestion.

EPA recently developed two reports summarizing published science about contamination in food waste streams, the effects of this contamination on composting and anaerobic digestion (two common ways to recycle food waste), and potential risks to human health and the environment of applying compost or digestate (the product from anaerobic digestion) made from food waste streams to land as soil amendments. 

Another EPA report summarized the available data on food waste technologies, such as grinders and biodigesters, used by businesses and institutions to pre-process food waste on-site. The report evaluates whether these technologies encourage food waste recycling or reduce the environmental impact of food waste. These reports are available at the links below.

Emerging Issues in Food Waste Management: Persistent Chemical Contaminants

The purpose of this issue paper is to inform policymakers, producers of food waste compost, and potential buyers of compost and digestate about the contribution of food waste streams to persistent chemical contamination in compost and digestate, relative to other common feedstocks, and the potential health and environmental risks posed by land applying compost and digestate made from food waste.

Emerging Issues in Food Waste Management: Persistent Chemical Contaminants (pdf) (3.2 MB, August 18, 2021, EPA/600/R-21/115)

Emerging Issues in Food Waste Management: Plastic Contamination

The purpose of this issue paper is to inform federal, state, and local policymakers of the latest science related to plastic contamination in food waste streams and its impacts on food waste recycling, the environment, and human health, and to prioritize research needs in this area.

Emerging Issues in Food Waste Management: Plastic Contamination (pdf) (2.7 MB, August 18, 2021, EPA/600/R-21/116)

Overview: Emerging Issue in Food Waste Persistent Chemical and Plastic Contamination (pdf) (317.1 KB, August 18, 2021)

Emerging Issues in Food Waste Management: Commercial Pre-Processing Technologies

The purpose of this issue paper is to assess the environmental value of food waste pre-processing technologies (e.g., biodigesters, grinders, and pulpers) used on-site by businesses and institutions that generate food waste.

Emerging Issues in Food Waste Management: Commercial Pre-Processing Technologies (pdf) (3.5 MB, September 13, 2021, 600-R-21-114)

Overview: Commercial Pre-Processing Technologies (pdf) (252.3 KB, September 13, 2021)

Research Highlights

U.s. epa excess food opportunities map.

This map displays the locations of about 950,000 potential industrial, commercial and institutional excess food generators, about 6,500 potential excess food recipient locations, and about 275 communities with residential source separated organics programs. The map enables users to learn about potential sources of excess food in their region and potential non-landfill recipients, such as food banks as well as composting and anaerobic digestion facilities. As part of EPA’s Office of Research and Development’s (ORD) Regional Sustainable Environmental Science (RESES) program, EPA researchers from Region 9, ORD, and the Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) collaborated to develop the map. OLEM currently manages and updates the map. Version 3.0 was released in August 2023.  Read a story about the map here .

​Food Waste Reduction in Military Kitchens, A Tracking Technology Demonstration at Fort Jackson

EPA researchers, in partnership with the U.S. Army as part of the Net Zero initiative, conducted a demonstration with the Leanpath food waste characterization technology to assess how overproduction and food preparation practices contribute to food waste in U.S. Army-operated dining facilities. As a result of the project, the Army was better able to understands the drivers of food waste in Army kitchens (primarily over-production), and over five tons of unused food identified in the project was donated to local food banks. This project was part of EPA ORD’s Net Zero Partnerships .

Organic Waste Diversion Feasibility Study in Columbia, South Carolina

EPA scientists identified and analyzed major food waste generators and opportunities to divert food waste from landfills. The study helped inform local and state efforts.

Evaluating Processed Food Waste from Kitchen Digester Use and the Downstream Impacts/Benefits

Growing demand for handling food waste in environmentally friendly ways have led to aggressive marketing for and purchasing of a variety of on-site food waste processing systems. EPA researchers are studying pre-processing technologies in use in commercial kitchens in New York City. The results of this research will assess and evaluate food waste pre-processing systems in real-world settings with respect to factors such as performance, capital costs, existing infrastructure, quantity and quality of waste and water streams, and its overall potential to enable organic waste reduction and diversion.

Evaluating De-packaging Technologies

EPA researchers will test the performance of food de-packaging equipment available on the market. Contamination from packaging (including film plastics) in food waste feedstock may complicate composting and anaerobic digestion operations and decrease the market desirability and safety of land application of finished compost and digestate. EPA researchers are characterizing plastics in food waste streams after the use of de-packaging technologies to determine if their use increases plastic contamination in compost and digestate. 

Effect of Nutrient Removal and Resource Recovery on Life Cycle Cost and Environmental Impacts of a Small-Scale Water Resource Recovery Facility

Scientists conducted a scenario analysis of upgrading a small community water resource recovery facility to include anaerobic digestion with co-digestion of high strength organic waste. Life cycle assessment and life cycle cost assessment were used to evaluate the net impact of the potential conversion.  The upgraded water resource recovery facility reduced eutrophication impacts by 40 percent compared to the legacy system. 

Feasibility Study of Food Waste Co-Digestion at U.S. Army Installations

EPA researchers worked with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center to assess the feasibility of rebuilding the sewage treatment system at Fort Huachuca, Arizona to include anaerobic digestion to accept food waste and other organics. The research team concluded that co-digestion of food and biosolids would be a win-win scenario for Fort Huachuca because it would help eliminate the largest part of the waste stream (food), reduce biosolids disposal costs, and generate power for operating the installation’s wastewater treatment plant.

Life Cycle Assessment and Cost Analysis of Water and Wastewater Treatment Options for Sustainability: Upgrade of Bath, New York Wastewater Treatment Plant

EPA scientists investigated the potential trade-offs within the context of a Southwestern New York community of upgrading a one million gallon per day conventional activated sludge system to incorporate advanced biological treatment and anaerobic digestion, including co-digesting an increased quantity of the community’s high strength organic waste. The life cycle assessment explored methods to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant, while simultaneously transforming it to recover useful energy for heat and electricity, nutrients for compost, and water for irrigation. The research provides guidance for small communities considering upgrades and demonstrates the positive potential of resource recovery strategies to increase effluent quality while reducing other environmental impacts.

Food Waste to Energy: How Six Water Resource Recovery Facilities are Boosting Biogas Production and the Bottom Line

EPA researchers evaluated the co-digestion practices, performance, and the experiences of six water resource recovery facilities accepting food waste. The report describes the types of food waste co-digested and the strategies--specifically, the tools, timing, and partnerships--employed to manage the material. Additionally, the report describes how the facilities manage wastewater solids, providing information about power production, biosolids use, and program costs.

Impact of Food Waste Diversion on Gas and Leachate from Simulated Landfills

EPA researchers evaluated the quality and quantity of liquid and gas emissions from lab-scale landfills (lysimeters) with varying amounts of food waste. In the simulations, those with the least amount of food waste began generating methane the fastest, contradictory to how current models predict landfill methane generation. This finding showed that food waste contributes volatile fatty acids to municipal solid waste, which in turn lowers pH and delays microbial methanogen dominance.

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A comprehensive review on food waste reduction based on iot and big data technologies.

1. Introduction

• Reducing food waste with IoT and big data-based systems.
• Machine learning algorithms that are used for FWR.
• Various types of sensors and technologies that are used to reduce the amount of food wastage and improve food quality.
• The challenges and opportunities related to using IoT and big data analysis for reducing food wastage in the supply chain.

2. IoT and Big Data

2.2. big data.

• Real-time analytics (RTA)
• Off-line analytics (OLA)

3. FWR Based on IOT and Big Data Analytics in Smart Supply-Chains: Sensing and Measurement Layer

• Proximity Sensors: The proximity sensors are intended to detect a nearby object using electromagnetic radiation such as infrared by detecting variations in the return signal. There are various types of these sensors, such as inductive, capacitive, ultrasonic, photoelectric, and magnetic [ 44 ]. These sensors are widely used in the food industry and in FWR systems [ 20 ].
• Position Sensors: The position sensor senses the motion of an object in a certain area to detect its presence. It can be used in smart agriculture and in IoT-based FWR systems [ 46 ]. There are also motion sensors that can be considered in this category that are designed to sense all kinds of kinetic movements of an object, as described by Ref. [ 56 ]. Ndraha et al. [ 57 ] apply various types of sensors including position sensors for the improvement of cold chain performance and improper handling.
• Occupancy Sensors: These sensors are used for the remote monitoring of variables such as temperature, humidity, light, and air [ 47 ].
• Motion or Kinetic Sensors: The sensor detects all kinetic and physical movement in the environment [ 56 ] and could be used in a truck to detect possible movement of fruit boxes to provide needed information to estimate the rate of food deterioration in a certain period for better decision-making.
• Velocity Sensors: The velocity sensors calculate the rate of position variation, which might be linear along a straight line or angular related to device rotation speed at known intervals [ 48 ]. These sensors can be used in crates to determine the variation of food position during food transfer. This will enable us to monitor the parameters that can affect food quality and make the appropriate decisions.
• Temperature sensors: Temperature sensors are widely used for the monitoring of environmental conditions of the surroundings [ 50 ]. This type of sensor is also widely used in FWR systems and more, especially for smart agriculture to enable farmers to increase their overall yield and product quality by getting real-time data on their land [ 51 ].
• Pressure Sensors: Pressure sensors sense the amount of force and convert it into signals. Sensors of this type can be used to measure the amount of pressure in boxes of food and send the data to the server for decision-making to avoid food waste caused by excessive pressure in boxes during transport. The sensor triggers a notification to the user as soon as the applied pressure is below a certain value that affects the quality of the food [ 52 , 58 ].
• Chemical Sensors: These types of sensors sense any chemical reaction and can be used for reducing food wastage in smart agriculture [ 53 ].
• Optical Sensors: Optical sensors are a broad class of devices for detecting light intensity. Optical sensors are suitable for IoT applications related to the environment. Therefore, they can be used for food quality control applications, in the food industry [ 55 ], and in smart agriculture [ 54 ].

4. Processing the Aggregated Data: Service Layer

4.1. ml and predictive models, 4.2. learning models.

5. Application of Machine Learning Algorithms for FWR: Application Layer

6. Wireless Communication Technologies for FWR in Smart Supply Chains: Network Layer

7. iot-based food wastage reduction challenges and opportunities, 7.1. challenges.

• Data Quality: Research on Big Data Analytics in food quality control using cloud computing technology has its own relevant challenges related to data quality, scalability, availability, and integrity.
• Lack of Standardization: These can be related to using different management systems by users and can be considered the biggest challenges related to the generated data.
• Lack of Communication Protocols: Bouzembrak et al. [ 114 ] explain that this can be considered one of the main issues that affect the data transmission quality, as it may cause delays, or some parts of the measured data might be missed due to a lack of reliable communication protocols.
• Security and Data Protection: Several issues are associated with IoT security in food quality control, such as inadequate hardware and software security. Additionally, IoT nodes that are not supported with enough security protocols can be a vulnerable point for the security of the entire IoT system along the food supply chain.
• Battery: The energy consumption issues related to the use of batteries also pose significant challenges to the success of IoT-based technologies for FWR.

7.2. Opportunities

• Networking and Collaborations: These provided access to a network in North-West Europe with wide expertise and provided an opportunity for participation in future collaboration initiatives.
• Quality Assurance: Continuously monitor food quality and signal any potential loss in quality.
• Decision support and decision-making: Using big data analytics and artificial intelligence to provide rapid decision support for food logistics.
• Sensor Technology: Providing at the forefront of sensor (traditional and advanced) technologies for monitoring food quality and big data technology developments
• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Making the right decision for food quality based on carefully analyzing real-time data.

8. Conclusions

Author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Ahmadzadeh, S.; Ajmal, T.; Ramanathan, R.; Duan, Y. A Comprehensive Review on Food Waste Reduction Based on IoT and Big Data Technologies. Sustainability 2023 , 15 , 3482. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043482

Ahmadzadeh S, Ajmal T, Ramanathan R, Duan Y. A Comprehensive Review on Food Waste Reduction Based on IoT and Big Data Technologies. Sustainability . 2023; 15(4):3482. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043482

Ahmadzadeh, Sahar, Tahmina Ajmal, Ramakrishnan Ramanathan, and Yanqing Duan. 2023. "A Comprehensive Review on Food Waste Reduction Based on IoT and Big Data Technologies" Sustainability 15, no. 4: 3482. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043482

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Sustainable Development in Omsk, 2002–3 and 2005

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Chapter 8 described how a three-person team from each of the distance-learning project’s four partner universities came to England early in 2001 for a course on developing distance-learning courses. Two of each team were distance-learning experts; the third was a university teacher with an interest in the content of the degree. I took these four visitors on a three-day visit to Yorkshire and Teesside to see UK environmental policy in action. The representative of Omsk State University was Professor Sergey Kostarev, then vice-chairman of Omsk Oblast Ecological Committee. At the end of the visit, he asked if I would develop a project with him in Omsk.

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Marquand, J. (2009). Sustainable Development in Omsk, 2002–3 and 2005. In: Development Aid in Russia. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230233621_10

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