Upravljanje otpadom hrane u Hrvatskoj

The focus of this thesis is food wastage in Europe (mostly the European Union) with the focal point being the Republic of Croatia and its comparison to other EU member countries. One of the main conclusions that were come upon is that food wastage occurs at all stages of the food supply system – from crop cultivation to household consumption. In both cases (the European Union and the Republic od Croatia), two main sources of waste were private households and the manufacturing sector. The reasons that these two sectors produce such staggering amounts of waste are mostly of behavioral nature. When it comes to private households, the most commonly occurring situations are lack of knowledge and poor planning. Immense amounts of healthy edible food are discarded because of lack of understanding of labeling, recycling or proper use of all parts of food bought. Another issue is poor planning prior to purchase which results in large amounts of food not being used, and ultimately discarded at the nearest landfill. In the manufacturing sector there are many different influences that make it a big source of waste. The most morally questionable one are the aesthetic requirements of retailers that demand that fresh fruit and vegetables be a certain size, shape or color. This is the cause of tonnes of edible fresh produce being thrown away, rising many different questions – of moral and economical nature. Other issues that occur are mismatch of supply and demand, inadequate storage or by-products. An issue that the Republic of Croatia often faces is the amounts of fresh produce that is imported from other countries that could easily be grown on domestic territory. Each year, Croatian agronomists are forced to discard tonnes of their produce because they were not able to sell it to domestic retailers. In both the EU and Croatia, some prevention measures have been taken and more awareness is being raised on the issue. The European Commison has started a Circular Economy Package that has a goal to halve the amount of food wasted on the consumer and retail level by 2030. Apart from that there are many independent organisations working to help the issue of food wastage. Amongst many, there is the Hubbub Foundation that has set up community refridgerators all across the United Kingdom and the Robin Food platform that connects suppliers with those in need all over Slovenia. In Croatia, the scope of prevention measures is somewhat smaller, but nevertheless effort has been shown. The Government has taken initiative in 2015 by eliminating taxes on food donations. However food banks and donation systems in Croatia have not felt significant improvement and remain on low stock for the majority of time. Other actions were taken by an association “Centar za kulturu dijaloga” that is cooperating with several faculties in Croatia to, amongst other things, motivate suppliers to increase their food donations. Generally speaking, some attention has been brought to the issue of food wastage in the Republic of Croatia in the past several years. Although some initiatives were started no major improvements have been reported so far and there is still many ways to advance and educate the public on these serious matters