In many countries, a considerable proportion of wasted food and food residues still ends up as mixed putrescible waste which contains a high-water content and which may vary considerably both regionally and seasonally. Market assessments show domination of crop-based commodity feedstocks such as maize or corn and plant-based lipids rather than food chain wastes. The authors investigate the conversion of mixed post-consumer organic putrescible food waste materials into fuels and chemicals.
One aspect of REFRESH aimed to design and pilot food waste voluntary agreements (VAs) across EU member states and subsequently assess their potential for wider adoption. In the context of REFRESH, a piloted VA is described as a “Framework for Action” (FA). In total, four countries across Europe piloted FAs: Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Hungary. In this report the authors evaluate the piloted FAs to assess whether they had been successful, show their potential impact and highlight the circumstances in which they are likely to be more successful if replicated.
This report presents the results of the simulations from an integrated model of consumer food waste. This is the first step in developing a model that can assess the impact of policy interventions on reducing food waste among consumers. Final aim is to create a predictive and dynamic policy support tool for a road map for the 50% reduction of European food waste by 2030. This model combines an Agent Based Model and a Bayesian Network.
A suite of case studies from across the EU, demonstrating actions to reduce food losses and waste.
This report aims to highlight the potential contribution of food waste reduction to improving the sustainability of agri-food sector, by integrating the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Cost (LCC) results and upscaling them to a higher system level, using Germany meat and EU tomatoes as examples.
This report presents the results from the life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) of two food waste prevention and upgrading case studies. The first focused on the heat treatment of manufacturing, retail, and catering food surplus so that it could be used as pig feed in UK and France. The second focused on the prevention of peach and nectarine (PN) spoilage and overproduction along the supply chain, considering Italian and Spanish production sold by one UK wholesaler.
Food Waste is problem related to all the actors of the Food Value Chain: producers, retailers and consumers. In this context, retail sector plays an important role in tackling the food waste problem. Food waste at the retail level can be reduced through the adoption of food waste reducing innovations. The authors investigate the most relevant factors that promote the adoption of those innovations among retailers.
A Decision Support System (DSS) prototype monitoring tool, focused to facilitate effective decision-making leading to actions that will prevent and valorize waste, has been developed and tested. This involved building the prototype monitoring tool (software) to register food waste data and providing the right control information with respect to food waste prevention.
These technical guidelines describe in detail the environmental, economic, nutrition and safety considerations of reforming EU law to enable surplus food containing meat to be fed to omnivorous non-ruminant livestock like pigs, in order to drive food waste valorisation through animal feed.
This document provides guidance for evaluating interventions and policies designed to reduce the amount of household food waste. In this context, interventions are any activity – such as campaigns, changes to food packaging or products – that are being undertaken in order to prevent household food waste.
This is a recording of the REFRESH webinar that took place on 2 May 2019. This REFRESH webinar provided insight into identifying, measuring and collaborating to address food waste in the retail sector. How can retailers identify food waste hotspots? What are the best approaches to measuring their food waste? What lessons can we learn from interventions made by a major retailer in Eastern Europe? How can different retail departments successfully work together?
The production of food results in by-products. Instead of disposing them as waste, they can also be valorised into new products. This quiz lets you find out what new products can be made from this food waste. The player scrolls two image galleries and chooses two pictures that correspond as food waste and new product. When clicking 'submit' the player is informed whether the assignment was correct. There are eight possible pairs to be found.
This is a recording of the REFRESH webinar that took place on 29 April 2019. This REFRESH webinar provided insights into drivers and interventions to tackle food waste at home. What drives food waste in the home? What are the household practices that contribute to it? How can we most effectively design policy interventions and evaluate impacts to prevent it?
This is a recording of the REFRESH webinar that took place on 10 April 2019. This REFRESH webinar provided insights into a collaborative approach to reduce food waste along the whole supply chain. What causes food waste in the supply chain and how can voluntary agreements address this? What is the role for voluntary agreements vs legislation? What can we learn from voluntary agreements implemented in Europe?
FoodWasteEXplorer is an online, searchable database of food waste compositional data. It allows users to search for nutrients, bioactives, toxicants and other waste related data in specific side streams.
This is a recording of the REFRESH webinar that took place on 9 April 2019. It provided insights into opportunities and approaches for increasing the value of food waste and by-products: What are the opportunities available at different parts of the supply chain to use unavoidable food waste and food side streams? What are the opportunities and barriers presented by policy? How can food streams be best assessed for increasing their value? What can we learn from existing case studies?
A voluntary agreement is a proven method for tackling food waste. By working together to achieve collective goals, organisations can collaborate and deliver change in the most efficient, effective way. Using practical examples from the REFRESH national programs, as well as WRAP’s UK success including Courtauld 2025, this guide outlines the steps necessary for building successful voluntary agreements.
Multiple methods to measure household food waste have been proposed, but little is known about their validity. In this study, five methods are compared empirically: general survey questions, diaries, photo coding, kitchen caddies, and weekly survey.
Is it possible to assess the amount of food wasted by coding photographs of household food waste? This study examines the validity of this measurement method and finds that the method appears promising for application in studies examining household food waste levels.
Public campaigns and other policy instruments can significantly influence consumer behavior and contribute to a reduction of consumer food waste. However, there are only very few studies that have evaluated to what extent policy interventions actually reduced or prevented food waste. The REFRESH Policy brief summarizes REFRESH findings on consumer behaviour as well as related research results and derives policy recommendations to reduce consumer food waste. The policy brief is based on the REFRESH report "Policies against consumer food waste: Policy options for behaviour change including public campaigns".