This paper aims to study the perceptions of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on behaviors related to diet and food shopping on a sample of 356 adults in Oman. The study is based on the results of an Arabic-language online survey conducted between September 15 and October 10, 2020, using the Survey Monkey platform. The questionnaire had 25 questions (multiple options and one option), subdivided into three parts. Respondents were asked to disseminate the survey to their networks as part of the study's snowball sampling method. Descriptive statistics and various statistical tests (e.g., U-Mann Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, chi-square) have been used to evaluate the study results. The study showed a significant shift in the attitude and behavior of respondents regarding food and health. Indeed, the paper findings indicated (i) a shift to healthier diets, as shown by the fact that 45.5% of the participants increased their intake of fruits and vegetables, 42.4% ate more healthy foods, and 53.1% reduced their intake of unhealthy foods; (ii) an increase in the consumption of local products, owing to food safety concerns, with 25.8% of the cohort stating that they purchase more local food items; (iii) a shift in grocery shopping behaviors, especially with 28.1% of the participants buying more groceries online; (iv) the absence of panic buying in Oman, since 62.36% of the participants said they did not stockpile food items; and (v) a reduction of food waste. Indeed, 78.9% of the participants specified they were not wasting more food than average since the beginning of the pandemic, and 74.72% indicated they were more aware of how much food they were wasting. Surprisingly, COVID-19 appears to bring many beneficial adjustments in Oman to make food consumption more sustainable and healthier.

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Rice husk is a major waste of paddy rice cultivation, produced in very high quantities, with no specific applications in the past. However, considering physical and chemical properties of this material, the use of rice husk could be of major economic and environmental significance depending on possible utilization options. Therefore, finding sustainable ways of using rice husk is essential for a large rice producing country like Iran. The main aim of the present study was to identify the most suitable options for using rice husk to accomplish the goals of sustainable rice production and valorization in Guilan Province, Iran. To this end, we employed the analytic hierarchy process and the opinions of experts for exploring the most important potential applications of rice husk for industrial purposes, for energy generation, use as animal feed, for soil improvement, for mulching, and disposal by burning from economic, environmental, and social perspective. Among the studied indices, the economic criteria had the highest importance score (0.498) in determining the best applications of rice husk, followed by environmental and social indices (0.276 and 0.225, respectively). From the economic perspective, the use of rice husk waste for industrial purposes (0.349) was assessed to be more economical than use in other sectors. From the environmental perspective, rice husk was preferred to be used for soil improvement. Finally, from the social perspective, the use of rice husk for industrial use (0.315) was also assessed to be more socially compatible than its other uses. Overall, the application of rice husk in industry was prioritized by respondents with weight 0.299, with next priority its use for energy generation or processing with weight 0.188, showing a slight superiority over its application for soil amendment. The findings not only aid in selecting the best alternative for husk exploitation but also help decision makers to understand why an alternative is preferred over the other options.

An increasing corpus of data demonstrated the disruptive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food consumption habits, particularly food waste, but the Balkan area is often overlooked. Accordingly, this study investigates the immediate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer knowledge and reported behaviours linked to food waste in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The research was based on an online survey with 2425 participants using the Google forms platform from 10 April to 10 May 2020. This period coincided with the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Consumers’ behaviours regarding where and how often they buy food, their attitude towards food labels, food provision and particularly the amounts and values of food waste and how they handle it were investigated. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics methods, and the significance of the association between variables was determined using nonparametric and multivariate statistical tests. The study’s findings revealed that (i) Bosnia has a low rate of household food waste and a favourable attitude towards food waste prevention, (ii) the majority of the respondents are familiar with the most common expiry labels, notably ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ and (iii) consumers adjusted their buying and consumption patterns due to the pandemic. The findings of this research are essential for developing evidence-based policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the post-pandemic recovery period since they are unique to that country. Indeed, the crisis’ lessons and insights may be used to help move towards more sustainable consumption habits.

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