Progress towards Sustainable Utilisation and Management of Food Wastes in the Global Economy

Table 2

Food wastes produced in the food supply chain as reported in the literature.

Food supply chain stage	Cause of food waste	Reference
Production and harvest	Crops left in ground; not meeting quality standard	[16, 17, 193]
	Overproduction to maintain supply	[17]
	No demand right at that time of harvest	[194]
	Wrong forecast/withdrawal of demand from retailers	[195]
	Fall of crops and livestock prices	[194]
	Failure to meet quality standards	[4]
	Lack of coordination within the supply chain	[6]
Storage	Pests/diseases attacking/destroying crops	[173]
	Lack of storage facilities	[6, 17]
	Livestock death and unsuitability for slaughter	[87]
	Lack of suitable refrigeration	[194]
	Shortened shelf-life promoting more food waste	[196]
Processing and handling	Trimming (shape, size) for attractive visual appearance	[6, 35]
	Crops nonedible or unsuitable for canning, livestock trimming during slaughtering or fish during canning/smoking, filleting	[6, 17]
	Dairy products during pasteurization and processing to milk based products	[87]
Transport and distribution	Excessive transportation	[197]
	Longer periods of inactivity and complex and expensive movements resulting in product damage	[197–199]
Retail	Products sorting to meet supermarket quality standard	[6]
	Products not donated due to safety standard	[194]
	Expiry of products such as meat and milk before being purchased	[200]
	Maintaining high standard and consumer attraction	[201]
	Packaging size not suitable for buyers	[87]
	Product/packaging damage and being not attractive to consumers	[202]
	Excessive awareness of “due date,” “use by” date, “expiry date”	[194, 203]
Consumer	Buying behaviour and purchasing pattern	[15, 200]
	Family size, income, age, job pattern	[19, 204]
	Excessive buying without need	[58, 197, 201, 203]
	Misunderstanding/lack of knowledge about labelling	[173, 197, 205]
	Product purchased but not processed/cooked	[36]
	Surviving more on takeaway food while fridge is still full/no time to cook	[200]
	Cooked product not tasty enough to eat	[206, 207]
	Product expired and produce that is wilted/bruised/moulded and is thrown away	[36, 197]