Recent Food Waste publication

What is it about?

This purpose of this paper is to understand the environmental impacts of stakeholder-driven sustainable purchasing policies in institutional settings. The research is framed using stakeholder and life cycle assessment (LCA) theories. The study uses a multi-method approach. Starting with interviews to understand the breadth of sustainability issues and significant food purchases facing institutional purchasing managers, the authors subsequently perform LCA of these various policies using the most popular food item in different categories. From the interview results, the authors found that food purchasers focus predominately on cost, thus, are committed to food and packaging reduction. They are driven to buy local foods based on their consumer stakeholders but share their commitment to buying local products if the cost is appropriate. In the LCA of popular food items in multiple scenarios, avoiding food waste of various forms had significantly higher carbon emissions savings than packaging reduction or transportation minimizing (buy local) strategies.

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Why is it important?

The work is important because many institutional purchasers do not understand or create policy that addresses the significant environmental issues, rather popular issues. This research shows the significant differences between various policy goals.

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