Valuing the Multiple Impacts of Household Food Waste

Abstract

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.

Food Waste Reduction: A Test of Three Consumer Awareness Interventions

“…The wasting of food produced for human consumption has been connected to issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, water loss, soil degradation, and hunger [1]. More recently, the issue of food waste has been linked to nutrition losses in diets [2,3], and these losses have important implications for the sustainability of diets and planetary health [4]. Efforts to prevent and reduce consumer food waste have included reducing cafeteria plate waste at an institutional level [5], changing guidelines around nutrition [6], food sharing apps [7], tailored home-based interventions [8], public commitments and goal setting [9], and information campaigns to increase food literacy.…”

Association between diet quality and food waste in Canadian families: a cross-sectional study

“…A previous study led by Conrad and colleagues [3] found that higher quality diets were associated with greater amounts of food waste among American adults. Given the majority of food waste in households come from fruits and vegetables [4], it is possible that individuals who have a higher diet quality cook and prepare more of these foods, which could lead to more unavoidable (inedible portions, like stems or peels) waste through the preparation process. It is also possible that health conscious individuals purchase more healthful foods, such as fruits and vegetables, but fail to eat them before they spoil as a result of poor storage or planning, which could lead to more avoidable (edible portions) waste.…”

Association between diet quality and food waste in Canadian families: a cross-sectional study

“…In addition to the economic and environmental impacts of food waste, waste of fruits and vegetables is also associated with the wasting of key nutrients of which many Canadians have inadequate intakes [18]. A recent analysis published by our team found that waste of avoidable fruits and vegetables was associated with substantial loss of bre, calcium, magnesium and vitamins A and C [4]. This suggests that many families in our sample have access to fruits and vegetables but are not consuming them.…”

“…Although some generalizations emerged from the study, there were notable cross-country differences -for instance, individuals residing in either the Czech Republic, Malta and Estonia were shown to have signi cantly lower amounts of food waste as compared to individuals residing in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Ireland [7]. Limited research has explored household food waste within the Canadian context using detailed waste audits [4,6,8] and no studies have examined the association between diet quality and food waste in Canada.…”