Prevention and Under-Reporting Effects of Food Waste Diaries

Jan den Boer, Agata Skiba, Emilia den Boer, Gudrun Obersteiner and Arkadiusz Dyjakon ()
Additional contact information
Jan den Boer: Department of Applied Bioeconomy, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, 50-375 Wroclaw, Poland
Agata Skiba: Faculty of Life Sciences and Technology, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, 50-375 Wroclaw, Poland
Emilia den Boer: Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wroclaw, Poland
Gudrun Obersteiner: Institute of Waste Management and Circularity, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, 1180 Vienna, Austria
Arkadiusz Dyjakon: Energy, Environment and Society Centre, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, 50-375 Wroclaw, Poland

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 24, 1-12

Abstract: One method of quantifying food wastage in households is a food waste diary. The goal of this study is to evaluate the reliability of food waste diaries as a methodology of waste-level measurements. This form of self-reporting is considered to underestimate the levels of food wastage because of three phenomena. The so-called self-selection bias is minimized by the chosen study set-up. The under-reporting and prevention effects were determined by measuring the food waste levels amongst 80 participating households. In week 1, the food waste amounts were determined by individual waste sorting analysis; in week 2, they used a food waste diary followed by a waste sorting analysis. The use of food waste diaries leads to a considerable prevention effect of 20%. Individual sorting analysis of uninformed households showed a generation of 59 kg∙inh −1 ∙yr −1 of avoidable food waste and 28 kg∙inh −1 ∙yr −1 of non-avoidable food waste. When using food waste diaries, these amounts dropped to 47 and 23 kg∙inh −1 ∙yr −1 , respectively. In the study, instead of an under-reporting effect, the analyses showed an over-reporting of 7%. In medium-rise housing, the food wastage level is lower than in the overall population of the study, whereas both the prevention effect and the over-reporting is higher. Low-rise housing shows the highest initial food waste level. High-rise housing shows the smallest prevention effect. In the countryside, both the food wastage level and the prevention effect are significantly lower than elsewhere. In smaller towns, a slight under-reporting effect was observed; elsewhere there was an over-reporting effect. Further research might focus on if and how long the prevention effect of the food waste diaries lasts amongst Polish households.

Keywords: food waste generation; avoidable and non-avoidable food waste; food waste diaries; food waste and dwelling types (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/24/11009/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/24/11009/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:24:p:11009-:d:1544506

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().