 Environmental cost of food wastage: Integrated response through a mix of environmental policy instrumentsPratyush Jain, Anjali Sarawgi and Pragati Jain Sustainable Development, 2023, vol. 31, issue 4, 2464-2470 Abstract: Food, when wasted, reaches landfills and emits greenhouse gases. The impact of greenhouse gases (GHGs), in turn, is felt by even those who do not waste food in the place. Externalities thus created are known to distort market efficiency and the most widely discussed externality is climate change. This study takes the case of United States of America (USA) to ascertain the GHGs resulting due to food wastage. The difference between cost per capita due to emissions from animal‐based products and emissions from plant‐based products comes out to be $122. In the year 1997 total GHG emission for the entire population of the USA due to food wastage was 401.98 billion kgCO2eq, costing the country 45.42 billion US dollars. Two decades later, in 2017, the food waste costs went up by 6 billion US dollars amounting to 51.14 billion US dollars and 452.64 billion kgCO2eq of GHG emissions The novelty of this research lies in highlighting the carbon footprints of food wastage in terms of GHG's and monetizing these emissions. The study proposes an integrated response through a mix of environmental policy instruments of economic incentives, command and control and moral suasion. Date: 2023 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:31:y:2023:i:4:p:2464-2470 Access Statistics for this article Sustainable Development is currently edited by Richard Welford More articles in Sustainable Development from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.