Mapping the waste from pizza and sandwiches

Food and research groups in the United Kingdom are investigating how much waste is created in the lifecycles of four types of food.

The research, commissioned by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), hopes to map out the amount of food and packaging waste created in different parts of the supply chains for pizza, sandwiches, quiche and frozen and refrigerated meals.

Along with counting waste, researchers will investigate the carbon emissions, economic impact, water use and water disposal associated with manufacturing the products, packaging them, transporting them, storing them and use by customers.

Not only will the research look at how much resources are used, but it will also look at how to minimise waste and improve resource use in all stages of their creation and storage.

"Identifying where waste is generated, and the reasons why, will help the development of effective solutions which are tailored to these products, with learnings then applied across the category," Charlotte Henderson, manager of WRAP's Retail Supply Chain Programme, said in a statement.

Researchers will conduct a survey of food industry companies (with hopes to cover 80 per cent of the UK market for the selected items) and develop reviews of specific companies' resource minimization efforts.

The research is being conduced by Food Processing Faraday and the Centre for Value Chain Research at the University of Kent, with support from the Chilled Food Association, British Frozen Food Federation, British Sandwich Association, and Pizza, Pasta and Italian Foods Association.

The results will be published later this year. Previous resource mapping r esearch commissioned by WRAP for fruits, vegetable, meats and fish is expected to be complete soon.

This article first appeared at GreenerDesign.com