Valentini Giulia, Randellini Niso, Scotti Giovanni, Garrone Paola
Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy.
Sci Data. 2025 Jul 31;12(1):1337. doi: 10.1038/s41597-025-05667-5.
Food waste is a major challenge for the food industry, accounting for 14% of the world's food between harvest and the retail market. The adoption of effective prevention and reduction strategies requires awareness of the quantity of waste generated, yet firm-level data is lacking. Collecting and exploiting more data is essential for addressing societal, climate, and environmental challenges. Despite recognizing the importance of measuring food waste, companies lack cohesive and applicable measures, and there is limited empirical research on the topic due to its complexity. Accurate data collection is hindered by improper recording, lack of standardized methods, and diverse sources. This paper contributes to filling this gap by presenting a novel dataset on surplus food and food waste management practices in the Italian food processing industry, gathered from 1,812 firms. The dataset includes 181 variables, covering 31 topics related to firm characteristics, food waste practices, and food waste performance, and provides a detailed, representative snapshot of the sector. This extensive dataset aims to facilitate further studies and enhance understanding of food waste management.
食物浪费是食品行业面临的一项重大挑战，在收获到零售市场的过程中，食物浪费占全球食物总量的14%。要采取有效的预防和减少策略，就需要了解产生的浪费量，但企业层面的数据却很缺乏。收集和利用更多数据对于应对社会、气候和环境挑战至关重要。尽管认识到衡量食物浪费的重要性，但企业缺乏连贯且适用的措施，而且由于该主题的复杂性，关于这一主题的实证研究有限。记录不当、缺乏标准化方法以及来源多样都阻碍了准确的数据收集。本文通过展示一个关于意大利食品加工业剩余食物和食物浪费管理实践的新数据集来填补这一空白，该数据集来自1812家企业。该数据集包含181个变量，涵盖与企业特征、食物浪费实践和食物浪费表现相关的31个主题，并提供了该行业详细且具有代表性的概况。这个广泛的数据集旨在促进进一步的研究，并加深对食物浪费管理的理解。
