Circular economy and food waste in supply chains: a literature review

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse how circular economy (CE) is implemented in the context of food supply chains (SCs) and understand how supply chain management (SCM) can support the transition towards a CE of food waste (FW). Based on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and Citation Network Analysis (CNA) of 333 papers, the focus of the study is located at the intersection of three areas, i.e. FW, CE and SCM. We explored how these concepts and fields of research relate to each other and identified research trajectories. The analysis and the synthesis of the reviewed papers allow for identifying research areas and highlighting a lack of a holistic discussion of FW, CE and SCM, which appear weakly related to each other in the existing literature, even if they are essential to the development of circular SCs in the food industry. A research agenda is drawn to drive future research endeavours.