Resources, Conservation and Recycling 94 (2015) 56–65 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Resources, Conservation and Recycling jo u r n al homep age: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec Carbon footprint of supermarket food waste Katharina Scholz a,b , Mattias Eriksson a,∗ , Ingrid Strid a a Department of Energy and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, Box 7070, S-75007 Uppsala, Sweden b Institute of Ecology, University of Innsbruck, Sternwartestr. 15, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 16 May 2014 Received in revised form 24 November 2014 Accepted 24 November 2014 Available online 11 December 2014 Keywords: Greenhouse gas emissions Food waste Retail store LCA a b s t r a c t Food waste is a major problem in modern society and carries considerable social, economic and environ- mental costs. Food production causes greenhouse gas emissions along the entire food supply chain and wasting food means that those emissions are produced in vain. There is consensus that food waste has to be reduced. For example, the EU and some of its member countries have set concrete targets to reduce the amount of waste. However, in order to achieve the overall goal of a more sustainable economy, not only quantitative but also environmental indicators have to be considered when pursuing waste reduction goals. This study analysed the discrepancies between the waste quantity and wastage carbon footprint (CF) profiles of perishable food products wasted in Swedish supermarkets. The wastage CF, defined as the product CF from cradle up to and including delivery to the retailer times the amount of the product wasted at the store, was calculated for products in the meat, deli, cheese, dairy and fruit & vegetable departments of six Swedish supermarkets. The CF from cradle to retailer of the various products was determined based on existing life cycle assessment (LCA) literature. Emissions due to production and transportation were considered. Data on wasted mass of the products in the period 2010–2012 was provided by the Swedish retail chain Willys. Data on bread waste are mainly held by the bakeries, and were thus not included in the study. Over a three-year period, 1570 t of fresh food (excluding bread) were wasted in the six supermarkets. The associated total wastage CF was 2500 t CO 2 e. The fruit & vegetable department contributed 85% of the wasted mass and 46% of the total wastage CF. The meat department contributed 3.5% of the wasted mass, while it accounted for 29% of the total wastage CF. The wastage CF of each department tended to be highly concentrated in certain products and thus halving the waste of the top three products in each department could save more than 25 t CO 2 e per store and year. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Globally, about 1.3 billion t of food are wasted every year (Gustavsson et al., 2011). Besides economic, ethic and social aspects, food wastage carries a considerable environmental bur- den. The provision of food causes emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) at all stages along the food supply chain (FSC), from input generation through agricultural production, post-farm processing and distribution to final consumption and waste disposal. In Europe, the consumption of food accounts for about 20–30% of GHG emissions from consumption of all products, with the agri- cultural stage in the FSC being the key factor (Tukker et al., 2006; Moll and Watson, 2009). Agriculture is among the economic sectors with the highest environmental pressure intensities and resource use, and accounts for about 15% of direct GHG emissions from all ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: mattias.eriksson@slu.se (M. Eriksson). EU (EU-25) production (Moll and Watson, 2009). The main GHG emissions at farm level are CH 4 emissions from livestock and N 2 O emissions from soils and manure management (Moll and Watson, 2009). Globally, agriculture is the primary cause of increasing atmo- spheric concentrations of CH 4 and N 2 O and produces 10–12% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions (Smith et al., 2007). In addition, the production of inputs such as fertiliser and energy use on the farm and for post-farm activities (e.g. transportation, processing, storage, refrigeration) leads to food-related emissions (Garnett, 2011; Sonesson et al., 2010). Therefore, wasting food not only means that resources are wasted, but also that GHG emissions are produced in vain. Accord- ing to FAO (2013) the global carbon footprint (CF) of annual food wastage is about 3.3 Gt CO 2 equivalents (CO 2 e). In the EU, about 90 Mt of food are wasted every year (Monier et al., 2010). Recently, the European Commission developed a “Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe”. The food industry was identified as one of the key sectors and one of the milestones is for the amount of edible food waste in the EU to be halved by 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2014.11.016 0921-3449/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.