Special sessions on ‘Life Cycle Assessment’ and ‘Food Waste’ completed the program. Silvia Scherhaufer from REFRESH partner BOKU was speaker in both sessions introducing the work provided by the REFRESH Team around the economic and environmental assessment of specific food side-flows in the tool FORKLIFT as well as representing the foregoing project FUSIONS and its work on the reduction of food waste and its potential to mitigate global warming in Europe. First speech was supported by a poster presenting a certain aspect of the methodology used for the assessment of anaerobic digestion as an option to recycle food waste.

Furthermore, the methodology provided in the tool ‘FORKLIFT’ was presented at the SETAC Europe 24^th LCA Symposium in Vienna, Austria, 24–26 September 2018. The symposium brought together international experts on LCA to share and discuss case studies and the application of LCA with the focus on renewable materials.

The presentations found an interested audience, which were keen on knowing more about the ongoing work and are looking forward to the publication of the web-based tool FORKLIFT.

Titles of the contributions were the following:

• “The decisive factor ‘substituted product’ in the assessment of recovery and recycling of food by-products and waste”
• “LCA modelling for the development of a simplified assessment tool for food waste valorisation and disposal"/ German title: "Herausforderungen und Lösungen bei der Entwicklung eines Tools zur Bewertung von Lebensmittelabfällen mittels LCA”
• “Generic model for the environmental assessment of anaerobic digestion of food by-products and waste"/ German title: "Generisches Modell für die Umweltbewertung der Vergärung von Lebensmittelnebenprodukten und -abfällen”
• „The reduction of food waste and its potential to mitigate global warming"/ German title: "Die Reduktion von Lebensmittelabfällen und ihr Beitrag zum Klimaschutz“

Photo: © SETAC Europe.