LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 7C: FOOD CHAIN AND FOOD WASTE 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
lected for the first time in Finland and this information represents a preliminary estimate of the food waste in
the industry. A suitable definition for food waste in industry turned out to be difficult.
2.4. Environmental and economic analysis of food waste
The environmental impacts of the life cycle of food waste were quantified, not only those linked to the
treatment of food waste (such as methane from landfills), but also those generated during earlier stages, i.e.
unnecessary emissions from the food production chain. The magnitude of environmental impacts of household
food waste were analysed and expressed in terms of climate impacts. However, many international
standards and guidelines (ISO 14040/4, 14067, PAS 2050, WRI/WBCSD GHG protocols, ILCD, DHCF,
IDF etc.) are published but no commonly approved standards or communication methods evaluating a foodstuff’s
climate impacts are available. In addition, the standards and guidelines are too generic to provide
practical instructions to produce comparable LCA studies. Thus we estimated climate impacts of household
food waste by food type categories using numerous data sources (Katajajuuri 2009, Pulkkinen et al., 2011,
Usva et al., 2009, Williams et al., 2006) by trying to identify acceptable and relevant CO2-equivalent values
for different food product categories. In parallel we made some approximations for the average GHG emissions
per ton of food wasted, similarly as for the European Commission (2010) food waste report. With these
two approaches we managed to evaluate the magnitude of climate impacts for households. For the retail and
restaurant sector, as well as partly for industrial food waste, the latter approach was taken. The economic
values were estimated using statistical data combined with information from Statistics Finland, Tike Agricultural
Statistics and the National Consumer Research Centre. Statistics Finland is the Finnish public authority
that compiles and reports most official national statistics (OSF 2011).
3. Results
3.1. Household food waste
During the two-week study period the amount of avoidable food waste per person ranged from 0 to 23.4
kg. When extrapolated to describe the food waste over one year, the average annual avoidable food waste
ranged from 0 to 160 kg per person, on average corresponding to about 23 kg of food waste per person each
year (Silvennoinen et al., 2012a).
Most of the discarded food was fresh and perishable, or leftovers from cooking and dining. Discarded
food was diverse: the principal discarded foodstuffs were vegetables 19%, home cooked food 18%, milk
products 17%, bakery and grain products 13% and fruits and berries 13%. For meat, fish and eggs the number
was 7% and for convenience food 6%. Home cooked food included various foodstuffs prepared at home,
such as casseroles, stews, sauces, gravies, porridges, and soups. Convenience food included ready-made
casseroles and other meals, but also hamburgers, pizzas and baby food, including infant formula. The waste
from tinned goods and other non-perishable foodstuffs, such as snacks, was relatively low, only 2.5%
(Silvennoinen et al., 2012b).
The main reasons for disposing of food were spoilage, e.g. mouldy 29%, past ‘best before’ date 19%,
leftovers from dining 14% and preparing food in excess of needs 13%. The reasons behind food waste varied
for foodstuffs discarded most often. For example, vegetables were discarded because they were spoiled,
whereas home cooking was discarded as leftovers or due to preparing too much food. For milk products, the
reasons were most often passing ‘best before’ or ‘use before’ dates. Bread, on the other hand, was either
mouldy or otherwise undesirable, presumably due to drying out and becoming less appetising (Silvennoinen
et al., 2012a).
We also studied possible socio-demographical, behavioural, and possible attitudinal factors that could explain
household food waste. Socio-demographical factors were, for example, age, size and type of the household,
and number of children. Behavioural and additional factors included shopping habits, waste sorting
habits and influence of package size. Unsurprisingly, we found that the size of the household was directly
correlated with waste produced – the more people there were in a household, the more waste was produced.
When examining waste per person, we found that singles in general produced more waste than others, and
single women in particular produced the most food waste (Koivupuro et al., 2011).
Statistically significant factors in household background information were size of household, type of
household, gender of person mainly responsible for grocery shopping, opinion on potential to reduce food
waste, appreciation of low food prices and opinion on the effect of purchasing the most appropriate packaging
sizes. When studying the effects of the packaging, we obtained several interesting statistically significant
results, such as households with fewer occupants had a stronger belief in their abilities to reduce food
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