Challenging quantification of the amount and type of food waste generated in Europe
Led by SLU partners, WASTEWISE has developed two databases to help in the understanding of how food waste is measured in Europe and what kinds of food are being wasted. The first database is a new version of the previously published database of macro-level food waste quantification data, which has been updated with data from Romania and Switzerland. The second database combines secondary data from existing studies on what food waste is composed of at different levels of the food supply chain with data on food waste generation collected by Eurostat.
Being able to estimate the composition of food waste is a prerequisite for estimating the environmental impacts connected with the waste, as well as the positive impacts related to food waste reduction. Although EU Member States are not required to report information on the composition of the food waste they generate, many countries, regions, and universities have conducted compositional studies. Data was collected via email requests sent to food waste experts in EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland as well as through a literature review. While most countries had compositional data at the household level, less data was available for the other stages of the food supply chain, such as primary production, processing and manufacturing, and restaurants and food services. Missing data was simulated using an average of the existing data in all the other countries. The result is a rough estimate of the overall composition of food waste in the Europe.
A comparison of the results by country reveals that food waste composition is most uniform at the household level, less uniform at the food service and retail and distribution stages, with substantial variation at the primary production and processing stages. The authors state that “the quantity and quality of food waste measured in different regions depends in part on how food waste is defined” and caution that “comparisons between different studies are limited by methodological differences that can affect the results.” The results indicate, however, that data is lacking on food waste flows at the early stages of the food supply chain and that further progress can be made on the harmonization of food waste measurement methods at these stages. Details of these and other findings will be published in future updates.
