Publication Date:
2015-08-12
Description:
The European Parliament recently called for urgent measures to halve food waste in the EU, where consumers are responsible for a major part of total waste along the food supply chain. Due to a lack of data on national food waste statistics, uncertainty in (consumer) waste quantities (and the resulting associated quantities of natural resources) is very high, but has never been previously assessed in studies for the EU. Here we quantify: (1) EU consumer food waste, and (2) associated natural resources required for its production, in term of water and nitrogen, as well as estimating the uncertainty of these values. Total EU consumer food waste averages 123 (min 55?max 190) kg/capita annually (kg/cap/yr), i.e. 16% (min 7?max 24%) of all food reaching consumers. Almost 80%, i.e. 97 (min 45?max 153) kg/cap/yr is avoidable food waste, which is edible food not consumed. We have calculated the water and nitrogen (N) resources associated with avoidable food waste. The associated blue wate...
Print ISSN:
1748-9318
Electronic ISSN:
1748-9326
Topics:
Biology
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Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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