Environmental aspects of food wastage in trade – a case study

Food production is connected with a negative effect on the environment as it is linked with the utilisation of natural resources such as fresh water and with the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs). It is, therefore, very important to prevent the wastage of food at all food chain stages. Special attention should be paid to the phenomena which burden the environment in an unjustified way. One such example may be the waste of final products at the stage of retail sale objects. The purpose of the present paper was to estimate the effect of wasted food in the selected network of the retail sale on the environment with the application of water footprint indicator and CO₂ emission. On the grounds of the collected data, the participation of food withdrawn from the trade, the reasons for the mentioned phenomenon and the size of the wasted food products and those donated to charities were established. Based upon such data, the level of CO₂ emission and the water print of the products which have not been utilised according to their destination were estimated. In spite of the fact that the animal origin products were characterised by a small participation in the weight of the unsold food (ca. 13.34% annually), they constituted the main source of CO₂ emission and water footprint estimated from the food waste. It was calculated that the annual turnover and waste of the products only in one trade network was connected with the unjustified emission of ca. 12 thousand tonnes of CO₂ and 13 million m³ of water footprint.