What Are the Environmental Benefits and Costs of Reducing Food Waste? Bristol as a Case Study in the WASTE FEW Urban Living Lab Project

Abstract

The city of Bristol currently generates around 48,000 tonnes of household food waste every year. This waste incurs loss of resources and environmental damage throughout the food cycle. In this paper we quantify and value the baseline socio-environmental impacts from household food waste in Bristol before examining the potential costs and benefits that may result from changes to food waste behaviour. In so doing, we look to better inform the choice of food waste reduction methods in public policy. The environmental impacts of two possible policy targets are explored: (1) a 20% increase in food waste recycling and (2) an overall decrease in food waste of 20%. Environmental impacts are estimated for 13 different hazards, including Global Warming Potential, Particulate Matter, Human Toxicity and Water Depletion. The societal consequences of these environmental changes are monetised using non-market values which allows us to directly compare the relative importance of different environmental impacts and the trade-offs between these impacts in each scenario. For example, we estimate that the Global Warming Potential of Bristol’s annual food waste equates to around 110,000 tonnes CO2, or 25,000 additional cars on the road every year. We find that a 20% improvement in recycling behaviour would lead to an annual reduction of 113 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, whilst a 20% reduction in food waste would result in an annual reduction of 15,000 tonnes CO2 equivalent. Findings suggest that the environmental impact of waste management is significantly overshadowed by the impact of resources used in food production and distribution before it becomes waste.

Factors affecting food waste: A bibliometric review on the household behaviors

“…As seen in Fig 5 the different clusters are overlapped, hence in this group there are some factors regarding household FW. Specifically, consumer's habits [104][105][106]; wrong interpretation of the expiry date increases the FW [27,107]; low cooking skills negatively affect the reduction of FW [108,109]; purchasing and preparing correct portions of food can decrease FW [27,110]; the weight given to social behaviours and reputation can influence food management at the household level [86,[111][112][113][114].…”

Testing Food Waste Reduction Targets: Integrating Transition Scenarios with Macro-Valuation in an Urban Living Lab

“…Local data were sourced primarily from the ULL partners. All of Bristol's household food waste (33,314 tonnes p.a., excluding sewage and compost) is collected by Bristol Waste, mainly in the brown food waste caddies and that disposed of in the large black bins ("residual" waste) [35], and transported to the treatment site at Avonmouth (Table Figure 2. Illustrative depiction of Loorbach, Frantzeskaki, and Avelino's (2017) "x-curve" used at the workshop to illustrate how the Bristol One City Plan targets might scale up over time, while also highlighting the gap in understanding of who (where) the "losers" (barriers) might be (data One City Plan, Bristol City Council, 2021).…”

“…on: (a) sectoral income and (b) climate (CO 2 ). It draws on a separate but linked socioenvironmental micro-valuation of food waste, modelling both increased recycling and reduced consumption (GHGs, air pollution, eutrophication) [35]. The macro-valuation focuses on market and benefits across the whole economy via sectoral interactions, while the microvaluation focuses on non-market costs and benefits in the food waste sector and assumes the rest of the economy was not affected.…”

Sustainable urban systems and just FEW nexus transitions

“…in anaerobic digesters). (Eaton et al 2022). However, the current food system strongly incentives food waste creation hence there is a need to rethink the food waste hierarchy (Parsa et al, 2021b).…”