An exploratory study of possible food waste risks in supermarket fruit and vegetable sections

Abstract

Food waste is an emerging issue in terms of food policy; the most common cause of fruit and vegetable waste at a retailer, in addition to excess stock and consumer behaviour, is the lack of employees certified in food handling. Fruits and vegetables require specific handling and storing to avoid waste. The objective of this work was to survey the employees of fruit and vegetable sections in supermarkets to understand their experience and the reasons they believe products are wasted. The results show that most employees have secondary educations; the average age of these employees is 33 with at least one year working for the company; and no significant correlation was found between age and seniority in the company. In comparison to international supermarkets, national supermarkets train their employees less. Employees perceived the best-selling fruits to be bananas, apples, papayas, melons and pineapples and the vegetables to be tomatoes, onions, green peppers (serrano), and potatoes, which are essential in Mexican cuisine, and their perceptions of best-selling produce were related to waste, probably due to the widespread availability of these types of produce. One of the strategies to avoid wasting fruits and vegetables in good condition is donating them to food banks.

Use of products of vegetable origin and waste from hortofruticulture for alternative culture media

“…Ways of reusing food waste have been constantly developed and improved, as food waste reaches alarming levels today (Ramírez et al, 2020). Thus, the development of methodologies for the use of different types of food waste, whether of animal or vegetable origin, has aroused the interest of the scientific community, in order to obtain new products or compounds of interest, or to optimize processes (Navarro-Peraza et al, 2020;Leira et al, 2019;Costa et al, 2020).…”

“…Agro-industrial waste has great diversity and has been shown to have potential for application in different areas, such as use as a source of fibers, polyphenols and bioactive compounds in general (Costa et al, 2020;Tagliani et al, 2019), organization and management of fruit and vegetable residues for human and animal consumption (Ramírez et al, 2020) and application in the development of alternative culture media (Cruz et al, 2020).…”

Sustainability assessment of food industry with the approach of water, energy and food nexus

“…The main challenge is to reduce the water and energy used, increase the efficiency of water and energy consumption in food industry processes. Another key issue is the production of significant volumes of waste as a by-product during processing (Ramírez et al, 2021). Significant quantities of products are discarded due to non-fulfillment of quality criteria for consumption.…”

Optimal preparation time in the vermicompost production process

“…Millions of tons of organic waste are buried and incinerated every year (Chen et al, 2020). In addition to causing many environmental problems, a lot of money will be spent on transporting, burying, and incinerating waste (Ramírez et al, 2021). In the method of landfilling, in addition to the problems and risks of entry of nitrate and other contaminants into groundwater, occupation space by waste is another disadvantage of this method (Santana et al, 2020).…”