Case Studies

Five case studies have been selected based on the different parts of the food supply chain, covering all actors, stakeholders and consumers involved:

Food industries: the food waste measuring tools will be tested in real environment of different industrial food processing companies: fruits and vegetables, canned and processed vegetables; pasta, olive oil, tomato, and fruit juice; and bakery, cured meat and dairy products. Moreover, food waste roots showing poor efficiency of the production process, technology and equipment will be identified.

Food retailers: the tools will be tested in both local and big supermarkets in different countries of the EU, checking critical FW drivers such as: storage conditions during transportation and at retail, damaged products dispensed for appearance factors, lack of clear expiration date knowledge, etc.

Food services: the tools will be tested in different services within school, university, work, and restaurant environments, where the main reasons for FW are overestimated stock, lack of planning, poor preservation, or not offering customers the possibility to take away leftovers.

Households: the tools will be tested with consumers at different households within the EU and focusing on specific food products, where the main grounds for waste tend to be social norms, household size, marketing practices, cooking habits and shelf life.

Selected food supply chains: tools will be tested along horizontal production and supply chains by means of companies and corporate groups with an integrated supply chain. Chicken, meat (beef and pork), milk and aquaculture will host the tools and check performance along their production chain.

Each case study will follow a specific methodology, interacting with the methods and tools of the project:

1. Stakeholder analysis and engagement: application of the tools, analysis of end-user needs and training of HR and workshops.

Data collection: monitoring through the tools and method proposed in WASTELESS.

1. Data assessment through continuous monitoring and analysis of data quality.

Tool evaluation: feedback from CS and impact assessment.

Operational material and best practices for the WASTELESS toolkit.

This will be used to issue recommendations for the optimisation of WASTELESS tools and will also help industries to identify their food waste sources and find solutions to optimise processes, productivity, and profitability.

The studies are coming soon.