Food waste, consumer attitudes and behaviour. A study in the North-Eastern part of Italy

Abstract

Reducing the amount of wasted food is a key element in developing a sustainable food system. Large quantities of produced food are discarded and, to a large extent, the waste is avoidable. The wastage of food occurs at all stages of the food life cycle, starting from harvesting, through manufacturing and distributing and finally consumption, but the largest contribution to food waste occur at home. In the past, several studies investigated the amount of food waste in Italy. Nevertheless there is a substantial lack in the knowledge of the reasons linked to waste food at households. The aim of this paper is to focus on the consumption food waste for exploring the reasons of food waste on family level, which is a significant fraction of total, in order to overcome food wasting behaviour and point out options to design prevention measures.