Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, Edificio Expo, Inca Garcilaso 3, 41092 Seville, Spain.
Technical University of Denmark, Department of Environmental Engineering, Bygninstorvet 113, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark.
Waste Manag. 2018 Jun;76:744-766. doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2018.03.032. Epub 2018 Mar 29.
Food waste, particularly when avoidable, incurs loss of resources and considerable environmental impacts due to the multiple processes involved in the life cycle. This study applies a bottom-up life cycle assessment method to quantify the environmental impacts of the avoidable food waste generated by four sectors of the food supply chain in United Kingdom, namely processing, wholesale and retail, food service, and households. The impacts were quantified for ten environmental impact categories, from Global Warming to Water Depletion, including indirect land use change impacts due to demand for land. The Global Warming impact of the avoidable food waste was quantified between 2000 and 3600 kg CO-eq. t. The range reflected the different compositions of the waste in each sector. Prominent contributors to the impact, across all the environmental categories assessed, were land use changes and food production. Food preparation, for households and food service sectors, also provided an important contribution to the Global Warming impacts, while waste management partly mitigated the overall impacts by incurring significant savings when landfilling was replaced with anaerobic digestion and incineration. To further improve these results, it is recommended to focus future efforts on providing improved data regarding the breakdown of specific food products within the mixed waste, indirect land use change effects, and the share of food waste undergoing cooking. Learning from this and previous studies, we highlight the challenges related to modelling and methodological choices. Particularly, food production datasets should be chosen and used carefully, to avoid double counting and overestimation of the final impacts.
食物浪费，尤其是可避免的食物浪费，会在生命周期的多个过程中造成资源损失和相当大的环境影响。本研究采用自下而上的生命周期评估方法，量化了英国食品供应链的四个部门（加工、批发和零售、餐饮服务和家庭）产生的可避免食物浪费的环境影响。这些影响在十个环境影响类别中进行了量化，从全球变暖到水资源枯竭，包括由于对土地的需求而导致的间接土地利用变化的影响。可避免食物浪费的全球变暖影响在 2000 年至 3600 千克 CO-eq. t 之间进行了量化。这一范围反映了每个部门的废物不同组成。在评估的所有环境类别中，对影响贡献最大的是土地利用变化和食品生产。家庭和餐饮服务部门的食品准备也对全球变暖的影响做出了重要贡献，而废物管理通过用厌氧消化和焚烧代替垃圾填埋来减少土地利用，从而部分减轻了整体影响。为了进一步改善这些结果，建议今后的工作重点是提供关于混合废物中特定食品产品的细分、间接土地利用变化影响以及经历烹饪的食物浪费份额的改进数据。从本研究和以前的研究中，我们强调了与建模和方法选择相关的挑战。特别是，应谨慎选择和使用食品生产数据集，以避免重复计算和对最终影响的高估。
