Food waste in Central Europe – challenges and solutions

Food waste is an important issue in the global economy. In the EU many activities aimed at this topic are carried out, however in Central Europe is still quite pristine. There is lack of reliable data on food waste quantities in this region, and not many preventive actions are taken. To improve this situation the STREFOWA (Strategies to Reduce and Manage Food Waste in Central Europe) was initiated. It is an international project (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland), founded by the Interreg Central Europe programme, running from July 2016 to June 2019. Its main purpose is to provide solutions to prevent and manage food waste throughout the entire food supply chain. The results of STREFOWA will have positive economical, social and environmental impacts.


Introduction
Food is one of the largest existing product flows.It is often suggested, that up to half of all food grown is lost or wasted and thus not eaten [1].Estimates on the global level of food wastage by the FAO state that 'roughly one-third of the edible parts of food produced for human consumption, gets lost or wasted globally, which is about 1.3 billion ton per year [2].Parfitt presented results of an overview on food waste quantity studies, coming up with estimates for the post consumer food waste for the United Kingdom of 25%, for the United States up to 15%, for The Netherlands 8-11% and for Turkey 9% [3].
In Central Europe however, the available data on food waste generation is limited.In the frame of a recent 7th Framework European project, Fusions, an attempt was done to obtain data from EU Member States.The results for the Central European Member states are shown in table 1 below.In general the data on food waste generation in Central Europe is of low quality or is completely lacking.Exceptions are smaller countries, that have an over-average GDP, like Estonia and Slovenia.These countries provided with data that was partly of sufficient quality.However the larger countries, like Poland and Romania did not provide with any data.In figure 1 an overview is given on the food waste generation data availability in the European Union.The overall assessment of the food waste data quality as provided in figure 1 shows that the situation is far from positive for most Central European countries.However, based on generic indicators for food waste generation in specific sectors and the size of those sectors in the considered countries (e.g.number of inhabitants, number of hotel stays, number of meals prepared in restaurants and catering) estimated of the amounts of generated food waste can be made.BIO Intelligence Service came up with an European wide overview for several sectors in the year 2010, partly based on older (2006) data [5].In table 2 the figures for the Central European Member States are provided.Apart from the lack of precise data in Central Europe, the striving to solutions is as well focused mainly on Western and Northern Europe.This is both true for research and demonstration project funded by the European Commission (e.g.FUSIONS, Food Use for Social Innovation by Optimising Waste Prevention Strategies, FP7; REFRESH, Resource Efficient Food and dRink for Entire Supply cHain, Horizon2020; FORWARD, Food Recovery and Waste Reduction, Life Long Learning Programme), national research and demonstration programmes (e.g. in Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, the UK) and national and transnational activities of NGO's.
For the reasons mentioned above, the project STREFOWA was initiated.STREFOWA stands for 'Strategies to Reduce and Manage Food Waste in Central Europe'.It is funded within the Interreg Central Europe programme.Although in Central Europe the exact amounts and composition of generated food waste is rather unknown, the main focus of the project is not on retrieving reliable data.The acquiring of such data is a costly and time consuming process.Apart from the fact, that it is harder to find funding for food waste data research than for implementation of solutions, it is also obvious that the food waste problem also exists in Central Europe.Therefore the main focus of the STREFOWA project is to demonstrate new as well as existing solution to prevent and manage food waste in a Central European context.

Goal and objectives
The main goal of the STREFOWA project is to improve food waste management in selected Central European urban areas by fostering food waste prevention as well as proper treatment and therefore reduce greenhouse gas emissions.This main goal can be divided into three objectives:  To improve prevention of food waste in urban areas.By establishment of strategies to avoid food waste along whole value chain (agriculturecommerce/gastronomy -households) through training programmes and awareness raising, stakeholder participation processes and cooperation strategies.These will be tested via different pilot actions;  To improve treatment of food waste in urban areas.Apart from the project partners, three institutions are associated to the project, not being a formal project partner: the Municipal Department 22 of the city of Vienna, the Municipality of Asti and Waste Treatment Ahrental Ltd.

Intended project outputs
The STREFOWA project aims to reach overall outputs in the area of transnational cooperation, tools, training & education as well as demonstration.The intended project outputs that will be reached by the end of the project duration are:

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.Food waste data provided by Member States within the Fusions project [4].

Table 1 .
[4]essment of food waste data provided by Central European Member States within the Fusions project[4].

Table 2 .
Estimates of food waste generation in Central European Member States (kg/inh.yr).
The project 'Strategies to Reduce and Manage Food Waste in Central Europe', STREFOWA, runs from July 2016 to June 2019.It is implemented in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy and Poland.
Definition of options to collect and treat food waste in sustainable way and introduction of new collection schemes and test facilities to separate organic from residual waste as well as introduction of new innovative treatment options for food waste;  To improve knowledge on food waste management.All findings will end up in the interactive, tailored to different users (private persons, local authorities, restaurateur, retailers, teachers, waste management authorities…) web based decision support tool which will provide best practice guidelines, training material, guidelines etc. adjusted to all relevant public and private actors.Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (WUELS, Poland) 7. Bay Zoltán Nonprofit Ltd. for Applied Research (BZN, Hungary) 8. Federation of Polish Food Banks (FPFB, Poland) 9. Square Bracket eU (Square Bracket eU, Austria) 10.SPAR Hungary Ltd. (SPAR, Hungary)