New methodology for food wastage quantification. Identifying gaps and data inconsistencies

Purpose: This work is seeking to provide a methodology to quantify the food waste in a standard and European manner through the agrifood chain combining information that is becoming available at local level. The methodology will be easily replicable throughout the European Union at the municipal scale. Methods: This methodology for the food waste quantification at local level is based on the Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE). This is information has been merged with data from the trading income tax at municipal scale thanks to the use of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS), generating a visual tool for the localization of potential food-generation focus. Results: The result is an intuitive and easy to use methodology to simplify the decision making process in order to quantify the potential focus of food waste at local level. Thanks to the use of this methodology, it is possible to geographically identify the potential food-generation focus at municipal scale. Furthermore, it is possible to identify all economic activities which could generate food surpluses, classified according to stages of the agrifood chain at local level. Conclusions: This new methodology generates straightforward and easy-to-interpret results for the decision making process in the framework of the quantification of the food waste at local scale and it provides adequate procedures which are easy adaptable to the specific circumstances in each municipality. Moreover, this method could have applications for larger territorial contexts, as the national scale, detecting possible points for improvement of the current official figures about this problem