The growing global demand for food, alongside with an increase in the environmental pressures and food insecurity, highlights the urgency of addressing food loss and food waste. This study investigates the magnitude and environmental impact of fruit and vegetable waste in three Brazilian supermarkets located in the State of São Paulo. Using waste composition analysis and life cycle assessment, 2,160.3 kilograms of unsold fruit and vegetables were quantified over one week per store, corresponding to an estimated 2,366.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions. The products with the highest waste were bananas, tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes, and oranges — accounting for nearly half the total waste mass. Emissions were highest for fruits, followed by vegetables, and tubers, bulbs and roots. Unlike many studies that rely on secondary data or literature, this research provides original, primary data from supermarket waste, offering valuable insights into retail-level food waste and its environmental consequences. The study emphasizes the importance of targeting high-impact waste categories and implementing context-specific interventions, including improved cold chain infrastructure, employee training, and flexible product specifications. Findings offer actionable insights for retailers to reduce food loss and food waste and associated emissions, contributing to national and international sustainability goals. The integration of waste quantification with life cycle assessment represents a robust approach to identifying environmental hotspots and informing food loss and food waste mitigation strategies in supermarket retail.

Food waste infers considerable environmental, social, and economic consequences. While previous research has focused on interventions at the supplier-retailer interface to reduce surplus, this paper explores the reduction potential in applying legal instruments and evaluates the climate benefits of enforcing four different policy measures: 1) Prohibiting Unfair Trading Practices; 2) Advancing Redistribution of Surplus; 3) Enforcing Best Available Technology; and 4) Legally binding reduction targets. Applied to the case study of bread in Sweden, the results clearly show that, through the enforcement of binding regulations or market-based mechanisms, surplus could be reduced by 6–50 %, while also lowering climate impact with up to 18 % compared to the current system. The results illustrate how Sweden can optimize its bread supply chain through regulatory and market-based strategies, with applicability on an international scale. These findings also highlight the potential in combining legislation and economic incentives to optimize the conventional bread supply chain, for reduced waste and improved surplus management. By demonstrating the benefits of enforcing different legislations and policy measures, the results can be used to further develop and enforce targeted policy recommendations and legislations for reduced food waste. While the scenarios explored are specific to the bread supply chain, the insights gained are applicable to other perishable food sectors facing similar waste management challenges. 

The current food system contributes strongly to environmental pressure, with bread, a staple product in many countries, being consumed and wasted in substantial quantities. This study assessed the environmental impact of rye bread produced in Sweden using life cycle assessment (LCA), with the aim of identifying ways to reduce this impact. A unique aspect of this work was the independent collaboration between research and industry, which provided a highly representative description of the Swedish rye bread production and distribution system. The climate impact of rye bread was found to be 0.81 kg CO2eq per kg, with production of ingredients being the main hotspot for all impact categories assessed. In simulations of impact reduction pathways, the highest climate savings were found for prevention of surplus generated at bakery and retail, which reduced the climate impact by 8%. Using the standardised ReCiPe method, accounting for 18 midpoint impact categories and three damage indicators at endpoint, yielded vital insights into otherwise often overlooked environmental aspects of food production. By using data provided by an industry actor, the results from this study enabled in-depth mapping of the resources required to produce rye bread at industrial level in Sweden, providing unique insights into production. These results can act as an essential cornerstone for future research and development of sustainable food systems.

Food waste is a critical issue in the food service sector, including nursing homes. Effective monitoring of food waste is essential for its prevention and valorisation, though it presents challenges, especially for long-term tracking. This study introduces a novel smart bin-based measurement method for quantifying and characterising food waste in nursing homes. The method integrates an automation of data collection, structured data processing, and multi-level categorisation. A case study has been conducted in one nursing home in Borås, Sweden, to assess the feasibility of the method. The preliminary results were presented from multiple perspectives, including weekly waste across all meals and overall waste distribution by type and composition, highlighting the method’s versatility. On average, lunch waste amounted to 78 g per portion, comprising 52 % plate waste and 48 % serving waste. For dinner, waste averaged 58 g per portion, with 68 % plate waste and 31 % serving waste. The largest contributors to waste were mixed dishes and potatoes. This study demonstrates the method’s effectiveness in capturing food waste dynamics with high granularity and potential for scalable, long-term food waste monitoring in institutional settings, offering a foundation for AI-driven classification and data-driven interventions.

The wastage of edible food still remains a major global challenge, despite its well-known consequences. Although bread and bakery products are identified as some of the most frequently wasted foods, the amounts generated and the pathways used to manage this surplus are often unknown. To support sustainable food systems, there is an urgent need to identify how much surplus is generated along the supply chain, including both sweet and savoury products, and to map how this resource is managed. The aim of this study was to quantify the surplus and waste of baked goods in Sweden, alongside mapping the pathways used for managing unsold bread generated at the supplier-retailer interface. Life cycle assessment, considering 16 midpoint indicators and three endpoint indicator, was used to assess the environmental benefits of reducing bakery product surplus. The results reveal that nearly 180 000 tonnes of baked goods are wasted annually in Sweden. Roughly 51% is generated at the supplier-retailer interface, particularly considering bread sold under take-back agreements where 14% of production becomes surplus. Only 2% of this surplus is recirculated to the food system, while the majority is instead used in energy production. Scenario analyses, including nine scenarios designed to capture various innovations to reduce surplus, demonstrated that prevention and valorisation strategies, such as data sharing and price reductions, have the greatest potential for reducing waste and environmental impact. Prevention could result in up to ten times lower climate impact per kg bread. The findings offer valuable insights for future research on sustainable food systems, and can act as practical guidance for industry actors, stakeholders, and policymakers to implement waste-reduction strategies that promote sustainable, resource-efficient food systems. 

Among the methods commonly used for quantifying food waste in households, there are limitations that affect the reliability of quantification results. To address these, this study used an automated quantification tool to objectively and with high precision quantify food waste in 28 Swedish households for an extended period, reaching a total of 3945 quantification days. The results showed that the average daily waste amounted to 0.159 kg per person. Recorded food waste displayed a large variation between days, weeks and months, suggesting that long-term quantification is necessary for precision. As the results indicated, between 115 and 569 quantification days is necessary to provide an average estimate with a ± 10 % precision. This study presents empirical evidence demonstrating the feasibility and opportunities of automated food waste quantification, emphasizing the importance of extended measurement periods, high-frequency data collection, and minimal user intervention on designing effective waste tracking systems.

Rhodosporidium toruloides, an oleaginous yeast, is a potential feedstock for biodiesel production due to its ability to utilize lignocellulosic biomass-derived hydrolysate with a considerably high lipid titer of 50–70 % w/w. Hence, for the first-time environmental assessment of large-scale R. toruloides-based biodiesel production from wood hydrolysate and crude glycerol was conducted. The global warming potential was observed to be 0.67 kg CO2 eq./MJ along with terrestrial ecotoxicity of 1.37 kg 1,4-DCB eq./MJ and fossil depletion of 0.13 kg oil eq./MJ. The highest impacts for global warming (∼45 %) and fossil depletion (∼37 %) are attributed to the use of chloroform for lipid extraction while fuel consumption for transportation contributed more than 50 % to terrestrial ecotoxicity. Further, sensitivity analysis revealed that maximizing biodiesel yield by increasing lipid yield and solid loading could contribute to reduced environmental impacts. In nutshell, this investigation reveals that environmental impact varies with the type of chemical utilized.

Food loss and waste occurring early in the food supply chain leads to increased resource wastage, including land, water, fertilisers, pesticides, energy, and labour. Targeting food loss and waste prevention benefits various aspects such as food security, productivity, economic growth, climate change mitigation, resource conservation, and waste management. Understanding the causes of food loss and waste is crucial for the design of effective solutions and their prioritisation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the risk factors and underlying causes of FLW in leafy vegetables, spanning from agricultural production to retail. To achieve this, the research methodology encompassed a case study conducted among small-scale producers and retailers. A comprehensive approach was adopted by integrating a systematic literature review of global food loss and waste causes and those specific to the Latin American context. This approach was complemented by exploratory research, involving interviews with various stakeholders, coupled with root-cause analysis. A methodology was developed for the creation of a causal map, incorporating the 'Five Whys' technique, the current reality tree, and an interrelationship diagram. The study's findings underscore the critical role of retailer-supplier dynamics in the management and flow of products, identifying a significant research gap in the development of comprehensive strategies for waste reduction. By exploring these dynamics, particularly in the context of take-back agreements and the lack of public policies incentivizing food loss and waste reduction, the research reveals the multifaceted nature of food loss and waste and the necessity for collaborative efforts across the supply chain to mitigate its impacts. The application of the structured methodology provides valuable insights into the root causes and critical risk factors of FLW, offering a foundation for the development of integrated strategies aimed at reducing food loss and waste and advancing towards global sustainability goals.

To achieve a closed nutrient cycle and more sustainable food production, enhanced nutrient recycling in the agri-food system is a necessity. Pyrolysis is an emerging technology to recycle the nutrient content of sewage sludge. The produced biochar can be used to reduce the need for mineral fertilizers; in addition, pyrolysis can also handle potential pollutants such as microplastics and pathogens present in sewage sludge. In this research, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out to determine the environmental impact of sewage sludge pyrolysis as an alternative to current practices of two different cases of sewage sludge treatment in two municipalities in Sweden. The results indicated that avoiding mineral fertilizer production by using biochar has a significant influence on the environmental benefits. Furthermore, it showed that an integrated system of anaerobic digestion followed by pyrolysis could perform as the most environmental-friendly option for sewage sludge treatment with a lower risk of transferring pollution to the soil.