Valuing the Multiple Impacts of Household Food Waste

Frontiers in Nutrition

Angela Wallace¹  Nicholas Carroll¹  Jess Haines¹  Monica Gallant²  Michael von Massow²  Mark Wickson²  Kate Parizeau³  David W. L. Ma⁴  Alison M. Duncan⁴ 

[1] Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada;Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada;Department of Geography, Environment, and Geomatics, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada;Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada;

关键词: food waste;    household waste;    composition audit;    nutrition loss;    environmental impact;    economic cost;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnut.2019.00143

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has estimated that Canadian households waste 85 kg of food per person annually. Food waste has become an increasingly common focus for policy, regulation, interventions, and awareness-raising efforts in Canada. However, there is still a relative dearth of data to inform such decision-making processes or to provide narratives to contextualize behavior change efforts. In this paper, we describe the results of an uncommonly detailed observational study of household food waste. A total of 94 families with young children living in Guelph, Ontario chose to participate in this study. Over the course of multiple weeks, we collected data on their food purchases, food consumption, and waste generation. All three streams of waste (garbage, recycling, and organic waste) were audited and the food type, degree of avoidability, and weight of each individual component of the organic waste stream was recorded. Using this highly granular data set, we found that the average household in our study generated approximately 2.98 kg of avoidable food waste per week. This estimate was then contextualized in terms of economic losses (dollar value), nutritional losses (calories, vitamins, and minerals) and environmental impacts (global warming potential, land, and water usage). In short, weekly avoidable food waste per household was calculated to be equivalent to $18.01, 3,366 calories, and 23.3 kg of CO2. These multiple valuation frameworks, which are based in detailed observations of family food behaviors rather than estimations derived from system-wide data, will enable more informed and urgent conversations about policy, programming, and interventions in order to reduce the volume of wasted food at the consumer level.

【 授权许可】

Unknown