Mattias Eriksson

• PhD
• Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Considering coffee's significant social role, reducing coffee waste is pivotal. We quantified liquid coffee waste generated in the Swedish food service sector and explored causes and potential mitigation measures. We combined quantitative data from 76 days across six restaurants with qualitative insights. The results showed that 10% of brewed coffe...

Food waste significantly impacts the environment and nutrient availability. In Sweden, public meals generate 33,000 tonnes of food waste annually, with elementary schools contributing 9,200 tonnes. A composition analysis of plate waste from 4913 meals in two elementary schools in Uppsala, Sweden identified the wasted food components and quantities....

Automated tools for waste quantification hold promise in providing preciser understanding of food waste. This study evaluated a tool to quantify plate waste in primary school canteens. It encompassed data from 421,015 instances of food wastage. The evaluation revealed high accuracy, with the tool's plate waste detection falling within ±10% of manua...

Feed importers in some EU member states face constraints on imports of genetically modified (GM) soy, a practice that may compromise the interests of EU livestock farmers. Using the cases of Sweden and Austria, we analyzed price transmission in the soy supply chain originating from Brazil, applying an asymmetric non-linear auto-regressive distribut...

The generation of bread waste at suppliers and retailers is often linked to the production of surplus bread. This study reports the results of the first direct quantification and economic assessment of surplus bread conducted in Italy, involving a panel of 12 bakeries and their branches located in the Lazio region, which compiled a daily diary for...

Retailers' food waste, often consisting of edible food, could be reduced, while simultaneously tackling food insecurity, through surplus food donations to vulnerable groups. However, sustainability assessments of food donations covering all three sustainability perspectives are scarce, hampering decision-makers in prioritizing donation as a food wa...

There is a preconception among kitchen staff that the most popular school meals drive food waste in Swedish school catering and that vegetarian dishes increase food waste, despite being less popular than meat options. By applying mixed methods, this study investigated possible goal conflicts between reduced food waste, high acceptance, and vegetari...

Food waste is an inefficiency problem that needs to be reduced significantly to achieve a sustainable food system. Best practices and knowledge are available on how to reduce waste but large volumes of food are still wasted every year, so policies that support or enforce broader implementation of best practices are needed. One policy that could be...

Although essential in the human diet, large quantities of available protein are currently lost or under-utilized within the food system, including protein rich side streams from conventional potato starch production. By using the genome editing technique CRISPR-Cas9, conventional starch potato cultivars can be upgraded to facilitate high-value reco...

Global food waste reductions are difficult to evaluate. The global ambition is to halve food waste by 2030. In this study, eight years of food waste quantification data from Swedish public catering were used to monitor changes and evaluate progress towards global reduction targets. A 15–30% reduction was observed and the current trend was a declini...

Surplus food redistribution can be a way to relieve co-existing food insecurity and food waste. The food waste hierarchy ranks surplus food donations for human consumption as the next best strategy, when food waste cannot be prevented. However, the effectiveness of food donation in terms of the amount consumed, or food donation as a food waste mana...

Food waste is a problem that needs to be addressed to achieve sustainable development. There is a need for interventions that can reduce food waste, including in organisations already aware of the food waste problem. Swedish school canteens have experience of food waste reduction, but need tools to achieve further reductions. This study tested four...

Public food service organizations are large producers of food waste, which leads to greenhouse gas emissions and the waste of natural resources. The aim of the present article was to gain insight into reasons for food waste and possible solutions for lowering food waste in schools in Sweden. In order to do so, food waste quantification in school c...

The environmental impacts of food systems and the health consequences of excess food intake are well-acknowledged global issues. However, the climate impact of excess food intake, or metabolic food waste, has received less attention. This study estimated the amount of metabolic food waste and its climate impact in Sweden. Excess food intake was est...

The call for papers for this Special Forum resulted in a very competitive selection of 37 being submitted. After several rounds of blind review, six papers were selected for this Special Forum. They clearly illustrate the challenges of carrying out research into sustainable operations and food waste reduction. They examine a variety of units of ana...

This data article describes 34 datasets, compiled into one table, describing guest attendance at lunch meal servings in Swedish public schools and preschools. Fifteen of the schools and all 16 of the preschools covered belong to one municipality, while the remaining three schools belong to two other municipalities, all located in central Sweden. Da...

To facilitate transition to a sustainable food system, it is necessary to address food losses. A large proportion of waste occurs during primary production, with large quantities of edible crop parts left in the field at harvest. One such product is broccoli, where normally only around one-third of the edible parts of the plant are harvested in Swe...

Fish oil has been used in conventional aquaculture for decades, despite the known links between increasing global demand for fish and depletion of natural resources and vital ecosystems (FAO, 2020, 2019). Alternative feed ingredients, including algae oil rich in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), has therefore been increasingly used to substitute traditio...

Tourism is one of the major economic factors contributing to growth and jobs worldwide. The number of international travellers has increased more than 50-fold in the past 70 years. However, the contribution of tourism to (municipal) waste generation is also large and is increasing, accompanied by an increase in some environmental and socio-economic...

Food waste is a significant problem within public catering establishments in any normal situation. During spring 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic placed the public catering system under greater pressure, revealing weaknesses within the system and generation of food waste due to rapidly changing consumption patterns. In times of crisis, it is especially i...

Bread waste represents a significant part of food waste in Sweden. At the same time, the return system established between bakeries and retailers enables a flow of bread waste that is not contaminated with other food waste products. This provides an opportunity for alternative valorisation and waste management options, in addition to the most commo...

Plastic pollution of the natural environment world-wide is ubiquitous. More than 80% of marine litter is made of plastics, 70% of which originates from disposable items, so plastic disposables need to be replaced with disposables made from renewable materials. However, it is important to investigate the environmental impact of renewable alternative...

Food waste is a significant problem within public catering establishments, caused mainly by serving waste arising from overcatering. Overcatering means that public catering establishments rarely run out of food but surplus ends up as food waste. The challenge is to find a solution that minimizes food waste while ensuring that sufficient food can be...

Reducing food waste is necessary for achieving healthy diets and sustainable food systems due to its negative impacts on resource conservation, food security, and environmental, social and economic costs. This paper aim is to quantify the amount and types of food that is wasted by the consumers in different restaurant configurations. The second aim...

Within the European Union, there is an increasing recognition about the negative environmental impacts of food waste making it a prominent policy issue. But there is no clarity whether policies aimed at food waste minimisation are based on sound legislative frameworks that actually empower the relevant actors. By carefully reviewing existing Europe...

I am co-editing this special issue of Sustainability together with Mattias Eriksson. Submission is open! If you have questions or want to check whether your idea is suitable, just write a message! Looking forward to host your paper Clara

To move towards a sustainable food system, we cannot continue to waste substantial amounts of the food produced. This is especially true for later stages in the food supply chain, where most sub-processes consume resources in vain when food is wasted. Hospitals are located at the end of the food supply chain and the sector has high levels of food w...

Food banks that redistribute surplus food from retailers and the food industry to people in need are not a new concept globally, but their connection to food waste prevention is new. As a result, new types of food redistribution units are emerging and diversifying to find new target groups and distribution methods. The aim of this study was to iden...

One innovation developed to tackle food waste in professional catering units is different versions of smart scales and softwares designed to simplify food waste quantification. The intention with this is to managing meal production more efficiently based on previous outcomes. However, quantification can be performed in different ways and having a c...

Call for Papers special issue on Food Waste and Sustainable Operations

There is an urgent need for primary data collection on food waste to obtain solid quantification data that can be used as an indicator in the goal of halving food waste by 2030. This study examined how quality baselines for food waste can be achieved within the different segments of the hospitality sector, encompassing establishments such as cantee...

This paper quantifies bread waste throughout the Swedish supply chain and investigates the loss rate of prepackaged bread products at the supplier-retailer interface. The goal is to understand the extent of bread waste in Sweden and to identify risk factors for high quantities of waste at the supplier-retailer interface, in order to provide informa...

About one third of the food produced globally is wasted along the food chain, representing a burden for the environment and an inefficiency of the food system. Tackling food waste is a priority on the global political agenda to guarantee food security. Defining a methodology for food waste quantification is key to monitoring progress towards the ac...

Trading practices such as the take-back agreement (TBA) can become a tool for retailers to exert coercive power over suppliers when market concentration is high. We explore the implications of TBAs for the Swedish bread industry using unique company data from a premium bread supplier and find that powerful buyers over-order and, thereby, waste. Thi...

Since food waste valorisation measures, like energy recovery, have limited possibilities to fully recover the resources invested in food production, there is a need to prevent food waste. Prevention is most important at the end of the value chain, where most sub-processes have already taken place, like in catering facilities. In Sweden, the public...

Public sector food service is a major contributor to food waste generation in Sweden, with schools, pre-schools, elderly care homes, hospitals etc., producing approximately 70,000 tons of food waste each year. Sweden has appropriate infrastructure for handling food waste in place, recycling nutrients and energy, but there is still great potential t...

Most environmental assessments of soy production and trade do not distinguish between genetically modified (GM) and non-GM soy. In reality though, soybean imports to European Union maintain identity preservation through segregated supply lines. We, therefore, perform an attributional life cycle assessment (ALCA) of the global soy chain separately f...

Food waste in the food services industry has been identified as an important unsustainability hotspot, but standardised methods for food waste quantification are lacking. Existing studies on waste quantity assessments have several limitations, such as short and infrequent quantifications times, large methodological variations ranging from physical...

Public sector food services are a major contributor to food waste generation in Sweden, with schools, preschools, elderly care homes, hospitals etc. producing approximately 70 000 ton of food waste per year. Sweden already has appropriate infrastructure for treating this waste to recycle nutrients and energy, but there is still great potential to m...

Food waste must be minimised to make food supply chains sustainable. This is especially relevant since food waste valorisation measures, such as energy recovery, have limited possibilities to fully recover the resources invested in food production. However, waste minimisation is costly when it includes new infrastructure or technology. Policy measu...

Food waste is a major problem that must be reduced in order to achieve a sustainable food supply chain. Since food waste valorisation measures, like energy recovery, have limited possibilities to fully recover the resources invested in food production, there is a need to prevent food waste. Prevention is most important at the end of the value chain...

Food waste is a problem with economic, environmental and social implications, making it both important and complex. Previous studies have addressed food waste management options at the less prioritised end of the waste hierarchy, but information on more prioritised levels is also needed when selecting the best available waste management options. In...

Food waste is a problem that arises along the whole food supply chain and leads to unnecessary food production, which in turn contributes to emissions that affect the environment and consumes finite resources. Food waste arising in food services is often used to produce biogas, in order to recover the energy and nutrients, but producing fuel from e...

Food waste is a problem that arises along the whole food supply chain and leads to unnecessary food production. This creates emissions that affect the environment and consumes finite resources. Food waste arising in food services is often used to produce biogas, in order to recover the energy and nutrients, but producing fuel from edible food at th...

The productivity in Swedish food sector has significantly increased during the last decades as has the capacity in distribution networks. Food company mergers combined with reductions in relative price on input resources has created a food production system that is economically more efficient. On the other hand, with some businesses growing disprop...

Food waste is a major problem and therefore measures are needed to reduce it. Since expired best-before date is a frequently cited cause of food waste in supermarkets, prolonging shelf life could reduce food waste. Longer shelf life could be achieved in different ways, e.g. reduced storage temperature. However, there is limited knowledge regarding...

Food waste occurs along the entire food supply chain and gives rise to great financial losses and waste of natural resources. The retail stage of the supply chain contributes significant masses of waste. Causes of this waste need to be identified before potential waste reduction measures can be designed, tested and evaluated. Therefore this thesis...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the food storage temperature in Swedish household refrigerators, to determine whether students use the best-before-date label to determine food edibility, and to examine if the study increased the students’ interest and knowledge regarding these issues. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 1...

Food waste is a problem with economic, environmental and social implications, making it both important and complex. Previous studies have addressed food waste management options at the less prioritised end of the waste hierarchy, but information on more prioritised levels is also needed when selecting the best available waste management options. In...

Food waste is a major problem in modern society and carries considerable social, economic and environmental costs. Food production causes greenhouse gas emissions along the entire food supply chain and wasting food means that those emissions are produced in vain. There is consensus that food waste has to be reduced. For example, the EU and some of...

The waste flow of Swedish iceberg lettuce was followed through the value chain from field to retail shelf. The study also included estimations of the carbon footprint of the waste at the different stages. At the farm level 3 tons of high quality lettuce heads were wasted per ha and year (compared to 19 tons harvested), corresponding to ca 1100 tons...

Many retailers take initiatives to reduce food waste, which can lead to enhanced sustainability, including reduced environmental impacts and cost savings. Another common environmental strategy in retail management is to increase the range of organic products. This study examined if organic food products have a higher level of waste, which thereby r...

Food that are wasted consumes resources and cause emissions in vain, besides the large economic values that are lost when the food is not eaten as intended. To reach the goal of 20 % waste reduction from 2010 to 2020, there is a need for measures in all stages along the food supply chain. In order to use the most efficient waste reducing measures,...

The aim of this study was to test if, and how, a retail meat waste prevention measure could work in reality. A retail store cooperated, by selling meat that otherwise would be wasted, with a catering company that purchased and used the meat for cooking. Together they managed to save 35 kg meat during 8 weeks in May-June 2012. The measure proved to...

Food wastage is a problem along the entire food supply chain and gives rise to great financial losses and waste of natural resources. The retail stage of the supply chain contributes significant masses of waste. In order to introduce efficient waste reduction measures, the wastage problem must first be properly described. Causes of wastage need to...

To prevent retail food wastage, better understanding of waste patterns is necessary. Flows of fruit and vegetables at six Swedish retail stores were analysed in this study, both by analysing recorded data and by performing physical measurements. Total wasted fresh fruits and vegetables were 4.3% of delivered quantity. The largest category was pre-s...