Environmental assessment of Swiss food losses in production and consumption and potential for reduction

Doctoral Thesis of Claudio Beretta

The production, supply, and consumption of food cause substantial environmental impacts. At each stage of the food value chain a part of the food input is wasted or declassified to other uses than the original purpose of feeding human beings. The treatment of these food losses causes additional environmental impacts. On the other hand, food losses that are used as animal feed or treated in a biogas or compost plant can substitute primary feed, energy and fertilizer. The related environmental benefits reduce the environmental impacts of wasting the food.

This projects aims to quantify food losses at the various stages of the food value chain (agricultural production, trade, processing, retail, food service, households), differentiating between various reasons for the losses and avoidable and unavoidable losses. Approximately 30 food categories are modeled representing the whole food basket. In a second step, these losses are linked with LCA data in order to quantify the environmental impacts that could be saved if the corresponding losses were avoided. In a third step, concrete measures against food losses are prioritized and their potential environmental benefits quantified in case studies.