Understanding global food surplus and food waste to tackle economic and environmental sustainability

Abstract

Although food surplus and food waste issues are extremely important, the amount of literature published on these topics is astonishingly low by our observation. The relationships between food surplus/food waste and economic/environmental sustainability have not yet been holistically assessed and discussed. The main purpose of this study is to understand global food surplus and food waste issues in order to tackle the economic sustainability and environmental sustainability crisis. Content analysis was used to analyze 500 relevant materials and was conducted by NVivo 12 Plus software. The results contain seven countries, six organizations, and six continents, providing a framework to recognize the economic and environmental sustainability crisis. In addition, six major organizations and regions were identified and were found to be relevant to the important issues of food surplus, food waste, the sharing economy, economic sustainability, and environmental sustainability. With the trend of globalization, this study highlights some preliminary evidence for reducing food waste, for conflicts of the sharing economy, and for regulated sustainability. Further research and regulations in terms of economic and environmental sustainability are strongly suggested.