The REFRESH final results brochure provides an overview of the work undertaken within the project including key insights and links to the results that are available online.

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.

The spreadsheet tool FORKLIFT was developed to help stakeholders gain a general understanding of the environmental impacts and costs for selected valorisation routes of a given food processing side flow. The approach enables the user to change different parameters and to try out how these changes affect the life cycle costs and greenhouse gas emissions. This report provides the general methodological background for the tool.

This brochure describes the interim results of the REFRESH (Resource Efficient Food and dRink for the Entire Supply cHain) project through May 2018. REFRESH’s research into the behaviours, economics, and relationships that lead to food waste will inform future recommendations for efficient and versatile solutions to food waste at all levels of production.

This report provides guidance on how to apply LCA and LCC for studies that specifically explore questions on handling side flows from the food supply chain. It is aimed at practitioners who have working knowledge of applying LCA and LCC in their field of expertise (e.g. food processing or waste handling) and policy makers that would like to get a deeper understanding on how to interpret and formulate an LCA and LCC based problem.

Evaluating the life cycle costs (LCC) of food waste is a challenging task and few examples of previous LCC exist. This REFRESH report reviewed existing measures and methods for the evaluation of LCC of food waste. It conducted a comprehensive literature review to identify major methodological challenges related to cost modelling and externalities. The report contributes to the development of recommendations for a standardized system approach.

The aim of this report is to review methodologies for evaluating the environmental sustainability dimension of food waste. Results from the review were analysed, paying special attention on several methodological aspects: functional unit, system boundaries, cut-off criteria, allocation, environmental impact categories, end-of-life, land use change, ecosystem services.

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