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
waste if food was sold and bought in smaller packaging. (Hartikainen et al., 2012). Other demographic factors
did not explain waste in a clear and consistent way (Koivupuro et al., 2011). The next phase of the research
is to include the amount of food bought (in different product categories), to analyse food waste and
reasons for it and the effect of socio-demographical factors.
3.2. Food waste in the food services sector
When examining all restaurants, service waste (over production) generally represented the main category
of food waste. The main difference between self-service restaurants and restaurants where food was prepared
to order was that in the latter the main component of food waste was leftovers. However, the amount of leftovers
varied notably from one restaurant to another, depending on the restaurant’s business model and type,
which in turn determined the portion sizes and the menu. In the restaurant business 25% of all food is served
through licensed restaurants, hotels, and catering services. During the study we found that the restaurants
representing this sector discarded 19% of all food produced and served. Of that 6% was kitchen waste, 5%
service waste, and 7% leftovers. From these results we can deduce that in Finland food waste in licensed
restaurants totals about 18-20 million kg per year.
Workplace restaurants and canteens serve 14% of all food in the Finnish restaurant sector. In these establishments
24% of food went to waste, as follows: kitchen waste 3%, service waste 17%, and leftovers 4%.
These results would indicate that workplace restaurants and canteens produce 13-16 million kg of food waste
annually. In the fast food sector food waste was only 7% of all food handled, 2% of this was attributable to
kitchen waste, 3% leftovers and 2% service waste. The results translate into nation-wide annual food waste
of roughly 3-4 million kg (Silvennoinen et al., 2012b). The results show that the restaurant sector overall
produces 75-85 million kg food waste. This means that about 20% of all produced and handled food in the
sector is wasted.
3.3. Food waste in the retail sector and industry
According to the interviews we estimated the total food waste of the Finnish wholesale and retail business
to be 65,000-75,000 tonnes annually; 12-14 kg per Finnish citizen. The amount of food waste in households
is approximately double that, 20-30 kg per person. The main product groups associated with food waste in
stores are fruits, vegetables and bread. Other products resulting in waste include dairy products, fresh meat,
fish and convenience food. Pursuant with Finnish Law, perishable products may not be sold after ‘best before’
or ’use before’ dates, when they are to be removed from the shelves. The least food waste was found
for tinned goods, dried or frozen food, and other non-perishable goods. These product groups were identical
in all Nordic Countries (Stenmark et al., 2010).
The food industry was estimated to produce around 75-140 million kg of food waste per year. This corresponds
to around 3% of the total production volume of the Finnish food industry. Altogether, households,
restaurants, the food industry and the retail sector produce 62-86 kg of food waste per year per capita, corresponding
to 335-460 million kg of food waste in Finland per year.
3.4. Climate impacts of food waste
Converting household food losses into greenhouse gases, a rough estimate in Finland for the annually discarded
food from households is equal to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 100,000 cars. Even though
pork and beef products amounted to only 4% of all discarded food, their carbon footprints were among the
highest compared with other food waste categories. For example, the amount of discarded cheese was less
than 2% of total household food waste, but its carbon footprint was almost equal to that of discarded vegetables.
At the entire Finnish food system level, including retailers, restaurants and the food industry, the total
carbon footprint of food waste was 500-1000 million kg of CO2-equivalent per year, around one percent of
Finnish total annual greenhouse gas emissions.
4. Discussion and conclusion
On average 23 kg of food per person per year was wasted (and which was avoidable) in households based
on this Foodspill study. In our study we calculated average household food waste from diary entries, and
established that the per capita values were significantly lower than for other industrialised countries (e.g.
Jones 2005, Knudsen 2009 and KFS 2009). However, the results from other studies are not directly comparable
due to differences in methodologies. Furthermore, because the respondents weighed food waste and
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