Abstract

It appears that a substantial amount of food waste may be due to marketing standards, yet there is very limited concrete evidence on how much, why and how to address it. There is a need to deepen our understanding and identify solutions to prevent and reduce food waste along with any trade-offs, by improving the business potential of suboptimal foods. This project sets out to deliver reliable evidence, produced through transdisciplinary research with the engagement of use case multi-actors, that a) estimates food waste generated by the use of marketing standards along the whole value chain, b) co-defines and validates sustainable solutions for the valorisation of that waste, and c) assesses trade-offs.  Furthermore, it aims to provide insights for knowledge transfer and identify opportunities for social learning through developing guidelines and policy recommendations, addressed to food businesses, marketing standards owners, policy makers and regulators, to help revise or design marketing standards and support future policy development, in order to prevent and reduce food waste.

To meet the overall objective of this project, the necessary activities will be implemented to achieve the following specific objectives:

-   Implement the multi-actor approach for trans-disciplinary research on food waste related to marketing standards by involving all key actors in the food value chain.

-   Assess the reasons for establishing private marketing standards compared with EU,

 international, and national marketing standards by defining their nature and purpose in relation to consumer expectations.

-   Estimate the amounts of food waste due to marketing standards by examining interactions between the stages and actors of the food value chain.

-   Co-develop alternative marketing models for the valorisation of food waste due to marketing standards by co-defining, deploying and validating food waste reduction solutions with business potential.

-   Assess trade-offs between objectives of food waste reduction and marketing standards by comparing compromises made and assessing their impact in the identified alternative marketing models.

-    Provide recommendations for future policies, marketing standards re-design and adoption of solutions to prevent and reduce food waste, building on insights and lessons learnt.

The project is set to begin in January 2024 and it will have a total duration of three (3) years.

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