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Value-Chain Wide Food Waste Management: A Systematic Literature Review

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Decision Support Systems IX: Main Developments and Future Trends (EmC-ICDSST 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 348))

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Abstract

The agriculture value chain, from farm to fork, has received enormous attention because of its key role in achieving United Nations Global Challenges Goals. Food waste occurs in many different forms and at all stages of the food value chain, it has become a worldwide issue that requires urgent actions. However, the management of food waste has been traditionally segmented and in an isolated manner. This paper reviews existing work that has been done on food waste management in literature by taking a holistic approach, in order to identify the causes of food waste, food waste prevention strategies, and elicit recommendations for future work. A five step systematic literature review has been adopted for a thorough examination of the existing research on the topic and new insights have been obtained. The findings suggest that the main sources of food waste include food overproduction and surplus, food waste caused by processing, logistical inconsistencies, and households. Main food waste prevention strategies have been revealed in this paper include policy solutions, packaging solutions, date-labelling solutions, logistics solutions, changing consumers’ behaviours, and reuse and redistribution solutions. Future research directions such as using value chain models to reduce food waste and forecasting food waste have been identified in this paper. This study makes a contribution to the extant literature in the field of food waste management by discovering main causes of food waste in the value chain and eliciting prevention strategies that can be used to reduce/eliminate relevant food waste.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK

    Guoqing Zhao, Shaofeng Liu, Huilan Chen & Carmen Lopez

  2. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK

    Jorge Hernandez

  3. Bretagne Développement Innovation, 1bis Rue de Fougères, 35510, Cesson-Sévigné, France

    Cécile Guyon

  4. ALSIA, Viale Carlo Levi, 75100, Matera, MT, Italy

    Rina Iannacone

  5. CNR-ISPA, Via Amendola, 122/O, 70126, Bari BA, Puglia, Italy

    Nicola Calabrese

  6. University of Lorraine, 34 cours Léopold, CS 25233, 54052, Nancy Cedex, France

    Hervé Panetto

  7. IBSPAN, Newelska 6, 01-447, Warsaw, Poland

    Janusz Kacprzyk

  8. Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera, s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

    MME Alemany

Authors
  1. Guoqing Zhao
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  2. Shaofeng Liu
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  3. Huilan Chen
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  4. Carmen Lopez
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  5. Jorge Hernandez
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  6. Cécile Guyon
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  7. Rina Iannacone
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  8. Nicola Calabrese
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  11. MME Alemany
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Correspondence to Guoqing Zhao .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade da Madeira, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal

    Paulo Sérgio Abreu Freitas

  2. SimTech Simulation Technology, Graz, Austria

    Fatima Dargam

  3. University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    José Maria Moreno

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Zhao, G. et al. (2019). Value-Chain Wide Food Waste Management: A Systematic Literature Review. In: Freitas, P., Dargam, F., Moreno, J. (eds) Decision Support Systems IX: Main Developments and Future Trends. EmC-ICDSST 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 348. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18819-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18819-1_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18818-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18819-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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