Sustainability > Reports > Enviromental

Topic: Enviromental

Food Systems (One Earth Journal by Cell Press)

Access to food is a universal need and a fundamental right, yet current patterns of production and consumption are failing to address issues of food security while simultaneously deteriorating planetary health. In recognition of the urgent need to transform the way we consume, produce, and think about food, this collection of opinion pieces, authoritative reviews, original research articles, and artwork outlines the complexity of the challenge as well as potential solutions towards sustainable food systems for all. You can use the search feature to filter for Open Access Articles.

One Earth is Cell Press’ flagship sustainability journal. One Earth provides a home for high-quality research and perspectives that significantly advance our ability to better understand and address today’s sustainability challenges. We publish monthly thematic issues that aspire to break down barriers between the natural, social and applied sciences and the humanities, stimulate the cross-pollination of ideas, and encourage transformative research. They particularly encourage submissions with cross-disciplinary interest. Studies can be conducted at all spatial, temporal, and socio-political scales, but all submissions must offer a significant conceptual advance.

Solving the Great Food Puzzle: Right Innovation, Right Impact, Right Place. (2023)

WWF (2023). Solving the Great Food Puzzle: Right Innovation, Right Impact, Right Place. Loring, P., Loken, B., Meyer, M., Polack, S., Paolini, A., et al. WWF, Gland, Switzerland

Our food systems are at the centre of some of the biggest challenges of our time, which means they must also be at the centre of our quest for solutions.

As we work to solve the Great Food Puzzle, innovations are key to unlocking the potential of food systems as solutions to the nature and climate crises.

On its own, innovation won’t be enough to achieve healthy diets from sustainable food systems for all; still, innovations can accelerate national-level food system transformation by helping to close three critical gaps that can hinder action in countries. These gaps are: (i) the ambition gap; (ii) the transformation gap; and (iii) the implementation gap.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution that can deliver the food systems transformations needed in all countries around the world. The Right Innovation, Right Impact, Right Place framework will help anyone designing or supporting innovations in food systems to build an innovation toolkit to maximize impact and achieve national-level health and environmental goals.

Ultimately and most importantly, who is at the table and who is empowered to take the lead matters. What makes this paper novel is the set of concepts and questions we have assembled and how we bring these to life with examples of a wide range of innovations from around the world, some novel and highly technological, others familiar but applied in creative new ways.

As we all work to solve the Great Food Puzzle, we hope the Right Innovation, Right Impact, Right Place framework presented in this study will help ensure that each action taken will have the most impact in the shortest time possible.

RIGHT INNOVATION
means choosing innovations that amplify the impacts of transformation levers and ideally can be applied to affect one or more levers to accelerate change.

RIGHT IMPACT
means anticipating the kind of change and impact any proposed innovation might have in a particular place.

RIGHT PLACE
means paying close attention to the social and ecological context in which the innovation is to be implemented.

Optimizing sustainable, affordable, and healthy diets and estimating the impact of plant-based substitutes to milk and meat: A case study in Spain (2023 Sep)

Muñoz-Martínez, J., Abejón Elías R., Batlle-Bayer, L., Cussó-Parcerisas, I., Carrillo-Álvarez, E. (2023) Optimizing sustainable, affordable and healthy diets and estimating the impact of plant-based substitutes to milk and meat: A case study in Spain. Journal of Cleaner Production. Volume 424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138775. (paid access)

Relevant to: 

Dietitians and public health nutritionists, Health care professionals, Policy makers

Question: 

How is an environmentally sustainable, affordable, culturally acceptable, and nutritious diet determined in Spain? What is the sustainability of current Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDG)? How much can we rely on plant-based milk and plant-based meat from a sustainability perspective ?

Bottom line for nutrition practice: 

  • It is paramount to evaluate the sustainability of diets from a holistic and context-based perspective. Our analysis revealed that although the Spanish FBDG have lower Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHGe) than current diets, they are more blue-water demanding and also more expensive due to the high content in plant-based foods.
  • We were able to determine a nutritious diet with the lowest environmental impact and lowest cost, but results revealed the need to apply actions at systems level to enable more environmentally respectful production practices, and make healthy foods more affordable.
  • Processed plant-based meat alternatives are not required to achieve a sustainable and healthy diet.

Abstract: 

  • The global food system is failing to appropriately nourish the population and has been identified as a driving force for environmental degradation. Changing current diets to healthier and more sustainable ones is key to decrease the incidence of non-communicable diseases and force changes at the production stage that will release environmental pressure. The determination of such diets is a challenge since it should be context specific, culturally acceptable, affordable, nutritionally adequate, and environmentally friendly.
  • Through multiobjective optimization we aimed to determine a sustainable and healthy diet (SHD) in Spain with the minimum cost and environmental impact (assessed through GHGe, land use and blue-water use) that deviate the least from current consumption. Additionally, this research also compares the optimised diet with the Spanish food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG), and explores the potential benefits of reducing animal meat and milk while replacing them with plant-based alternatives. Compared to current consumption, a SHD in Spain can be more nutritious and reduce cost, GHGe, land and blue-water use by 32%, 46%, 27%, and 41%, respectively.
  • The Spanish intake displayed the worst nutritional assessment and the highest values for GHGe and land use. The Spanish FBDG showed the highest cost and blue-water usage. Further analysis revealed that plant-based meat alternatives are not necessary to achieve a nutritionally adequate diet at the minimum cost and environmental impact. Shifting to fortified plant-based milk alternatives may add additional environmental benefits.
  • This work emphasizes the potentiality of using optimization to determine a SHD and identifies important gaps to be fulfilled in future research.

Details of results: 

  • Compared to the Spanish intake, a nutritionally adequate sustainable and healthy diet can be 1.61 € cheaper, reduce GHGe by 2.33 kgCO2eq, land use by 1.5 m2, and blue water use by 156 L. 
  • The Spanish FBDG basket was the most expensive and blue water demanding, mainly explained by the high content of fruits and vegetables. 
  • The Spanish intake showed the lowest nutritional index and the highest GHG and land footprint due to the high content of animal protein.

Of additional interest: 

Conflict of interest/ Funding:  

None

Corresponding author: 

Júlia Muñoz Martínez, juliamm1@blanquerna.url.edu

Addressing Food Waste at University College Dublin, Ireland (2023 Sep)

At a glance

  • Two students undertook this as their final year project for the BSc in Human Nutrition at UCD and two students were working as work placement interns with the clinical nutrition and dietetics team at the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy & Sports Science.

Background:

Food waste is a global issue which carries many environmental and economic implications. An estimated 25-33%, or 1.3 billion tonnes, of food is wasted globally (1). The UN SDG of halving food waste by 2030 requires large scale action. Action in Ireland is guided by European directives to monitor and reduce food waste in line with the UN SDG goals (2).

Universities are settings with large populations and diverse expertise that could address food waste in meaningful and innovate ways. The student and staff population at UCD is over 30,000 with over 4000 beds provided for student residences on-campus. There are several large restaurants, numerous cafes and delis, coffee docks, 2 grocery shops, and other small vendors across the campus. Novel food vans park up once per week and during events or festivals. There are 4 main providers of catering to events and conferences across the campus. In short, UCD is akin to a large, bustling town with a food system to match.

UCD Estate services already has several supporting policies and programmes in place for sustainability. (3) UCD seeks the attainment of a sustainable, healthy and living campus and as such endeavours to manage the campus in a way that considers energy and water usage, waste management, sustainable commuting and biodiversity in all of its activities where relevant.

For students, there are opportunities to explore different aspects of the university food environment for the purpose of learning about food systems, waste, and what it all means for sustainability. To obtain a snapshot of the university campus, students focused on:

  • Food waste practices within a large university restaurant setting
  • Food waste knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours among students in residence on campus
  • Food waste within one staff building – the waste was collected, the students explored different methods of composting, and organised a living soil and composting workshop open to staff and students in collaboration with the community garden at the School of Veterinary Medicine.

Lessons Learnt:

  • A pilot exploratory project helped to build diverse relationships across campus including with restaurant management, Green Campus, the community garden, food waste and sustainability researchers and initiate conversations about this topic.
  • Small projects can attract interested staff and students and support the sustainability of actions with willing volunteers (e.g. continuing composting).
  • Accessing students to complete a survey was challenging and on-campus residence initiatives to engage students will require additional time and creativity.
  • The most wasted food group in a large university restaurant was starches, followed by vegetables. Plate waste, rather than kitchen waste, were the focus of the study, therefore server and consumer level engagement around portions sizes and waste awareness may be the appropriate focus for intervention.
  • The team in nutrition and dietetics at UCD collaborate with Airfield Farm Estate, where they demonstrate opportunities for full composting of food waste on-site, creating valuable compost and fertiliser for their garden and food growing.
  • The study is being developed further (in 2023/2024) to engage more with students’ knowledge and attitudes and repeat the restaurant methods to obtain a full academic year snapshot.

What Else? Other Relevant Examples

Food for Thought
Educators and Students seem the ideal role models for reducing food waste.
What systems need to be in place to avoid waste?
What supports do universities need to reduce food waste?

Contact Information
Sarah Browne, sarah.browne1@ucd.ie

References:

1 – International Day of Awareness on Food Loss and Waste Reduction 29 September

2 – Irish National Food Waste Prevention Roadmap 2023-2025 From Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications Published on 30 November 2022, Last updated on 30 January 2023 )

3 – Summary of UCD Sustainability Activities via Estates

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetic’s Future of Food

In 2012, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation launched the Future of Food initiative. In October 2018 they released the Sustainable, Resilient, and Healthy Food and Water Systems dietetic internship concentration in collaboration with Nutrition and Dietetic Educators and Preceptors and the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics. The Future of Food page has a number of resources relavent to Dietitians and Nutritionists – Studies, Toolkits, Recorded Webinars, and Infographics.

Red-Listed Seafood (2023 Aug)

At a Glance

  • Madalyn Higgins, RD, the Dietitian and Sustainability Manager at Acadia Dining Services (provided by Chartwell’s Canada) worked with the students in NUTR 4913 Sustainable Food Systems and Dietary Patterns to address this target, providing them with a meaningful experiential learning opportunity. The students were all studying to become nutrition or health professionals, at least half of them intended on a career in dietetics.
The efforts of the students focused on three areas:
  • Understanding and communicating key messages about sustainable seafood.  Students put together a comprehensive review of existing research surrounding the topic and created communications tools to be displayed in the dining hall to inform staff and students about the negative effects of Red-Listed seafood and what steps they can take to minimize these effects.
  • Identifying Red-Listed seafood on the menu. Students investigated seafood sources to determine if they are on the Red List. This meant speaking with food system actors such as distributors and fisheries and comparing information to Ocean Wise resources.
  • Exploring strategies for more sustainable menu alternatives. Students proposed potential replacements using comparable items and looked for distributors.
  • The students presented their work to the dining hall’s Chef, Dietitian and Sustainability Manager, Director of Operations and Marketing Manager.
  • These efforts aimed to promote environmentally responsible dining practices at Acadia University while raising awareness about the importance of sustainable seafood sourcing.

Background:

Buying seafood that is Red-Listed has been recognized worldwide as a significant problem, as it is linked to major concerns for our fisheries and the health of the planet such as low fish stock numbers, destabilization of the ecosystem-wide food chain, and Irresponsible fishing practices that contribute to the destruction of our oceans.

With the growing population and growing appetite for fish and seafood in developed nations, billions of people around the world rely on fish and seafood as an essential source of protein and a means of income. Researchers have gathered that this seafood should not be made commercially available and alternative options need to be considered.

Organizations such as Seafood Watch, categorize red-listed seafood through different ranking systems tailored for various types of fishing such as fisheries and aquaculture, and score them based on their sustainability criteria.

The sum of the scores allow the seafood to fall into Green (good choice), Yellow (good alternative), or Red (avoid) categories. Other organizations such as Ocean-Wise and Aquaculture Stewardship Council also assess sustainability based on Seafood Watch’s sustainability scoring system  and convert the scores from three-fold to a binary system of Green and Red. Learn more…

Lessons Learnt:

  • Through research, students gathered that the problem is that there is a lot of complexity and lack of transparency surrounding the global seafood supply chain and what seafood is sustainable to eat.
  • There is a need to improve transparency regarding sustainable seafood and ability to access this information. The group learned about the importance of understanding these tools to identify relevant information about sustainable seafood options.
  • It is everyone’s responsibility to ensure sustainable seafood consumption. Policies should be put in place to regulate how seafood is being labeled sustainable.
  • While not easy, it is possible to identify unsustainable seafood sources and replace them with more sustainable sources.
  • Sustainably sourced seafood, such as recirculating aquaculture is not perfect but can create seafood options. These options can be much more expensive, and we rely on food and nutrition professionals to get creative in the kitchen to use them more sparingly.
  • The seafood that the students helped remove included the red-listed atlantic salmon and white shrimp that was being served in the Acadia dining hall.  Students gathered sustainable options to be presented as recommendations to replace these red-listed menu items. The better choices included the Ocean Wise-approved farmed Whiteleg shrimp and the Ocean Wise-approved farmed Giant Tiger shrimp. 

What Else? Other Relevant Examples

  • Recirculating aquaculture is Ocean Wise approved by fisheries worldwide and is often used for Atlantic salmon farming. Learn more…
  • Through the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, you can search ASC-certified seafood using a simple drop-down search. Learn more…
  • Organizations such as the Marine Conservation Society create resources to help educate students about ocean sustainability. Learn more…
  • Nourish Canada has developed a Sustainable Menu Guide that can guide menus for organizations such as University campuses. The menu guide simplifies efforts o create sustainable menus that reduce environmental impact while offering healthy, affordable, acceptable, and fair food to clients.  While not specific to sustainable seafood, it is more broadly helpful with practical examples.

Food for Thought
How do we ensure that we have aquatic resources for the future, especially with the growing demand?
What kind of tools are effective or needed to empower and educate consumers to make sustainable choices?
What supports do food service providers need to serve sustainable seafood choices?

Contact Information
Madalyn Higgins, Madalyn.Higgins@compass-canada.com

Aquatic Foods Toolkit (2023)

A World of Aquatic Foods Resources: Open-access resources designed to empower chefs, foodservice, consumer packaged goods entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, and other aquatic food advocates in promoting bivalves and sea vegetables.

🌐 You’ll get: Free, open-access toolkits, packed with evidence-based resources, eater insights, tested messaging, nutritional guidance, and inspiring recipes. Access to an interactive Aquatic Foods Ecosystem Map, so you can connect with others creating impact through sea vegetables and bivalves.

Aquatic foods—foods derived from aquatic animals, plants, or algae—have long been enjoyed traditionally by many cultures through the centuries. They have been highlighted in recent landmark reports for their ability to help build a healthy, diversified, equitable, and sustainable food future. Few topics today at the intersection of food, cuisine, health, and sustainability are more exciting than the vast potential of foods from the sea.

For this project, Food for Climate League joined forces with Food + Planet (F+P) and set out to develop narratives that can equip foodservice, CPG, retail, and nutrition professionals to market and promote sustainable aquatic foods successfully. With funding from Builders Initiative, they developed evidence-based health and wellness messaging and narratives for sustainable and nutritious aquatic foods, namely bivalves and sea vegetables.

🪸 The research outlined in the toolkits is a mix of qualitative and quantitative work conducted in 2022 to understand the aquatic foods landscape, including current and potential focus points and narratives around sustainable aquatic foods.

Seaweed’s contribution to food security in low- and middle-income countries: Benefits from production, processing and trade (2023 Jun)

Patrick Webb, Natalie K. Somers, Shakuntala H. Thilsted. Seaweed’s contribution to food security in low- and middle-income countries: Benefits from production, processing and trade. Global Food Security. Volume 37. (2023) 100686, ISSN 2211-9124, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2023.100686.

Excerpts from the paper: One proposed solution has been to focus more on water-based food systems in general (often referred to as ‘blue foods’), and on seaweed in particular. But how realistic are such propositions? This paper explores the potential of seaweed to address food insecurity and poor nutrition in LMICs, alongside its potential to mitigate the carbon footprint of food systems globally.

This paper has five parts:

  1. First, an introduction
  2. The second section describes the types of seaweeds and major uses, their nutrient content and environmental attributes.
  3. Section three explores patterns and trends in the production, trade and consumption of seaweed, globally and within LMICs.
  4. A fourth section focuses on practical challenges and constraints to upscaling the use of seaweed in resource-constrained countries and highlights the kinds of investments needed to overcome hurdles.
  5. The final conclusions section offers recommendations for policy action.

Highlights:

  • Seaweed production globally has grown rapidly in recent decades.
  • Most growth was in Asia, but there have been production increases in Africa and Latin America.
  • There is growing attention to the potential for seaweed to provide non-terrestrial nutrients without the need for land, freshwater, or chemicals.
  • This paper explores opportunities and challenges relating to the farming and commercialization of seaweed in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
  • Data gaps and coverage impede a full understanding of trends and patterns in what is produced or consumed .
  • There appears to be potential for seaweed-related activities to grow in many coastal LMICs.
  • hat said, such activities would contribute more to food security through income effects than as inputs to diets.
  • Seaweed can be a high-value export crop contributing to LMIC food security by increasing export potential and household purchasing power.

Measurement of diets that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, affordable, and equitable: A scoping review of metrics, findings, and research gaps (2023 Apr)

Citation: Webb P, Livingston Staffier K, Lee H, Howell B, Battaglia K, Bell BM, Matteson J, McKeown NM, Cash SB, Zhang FF, Decker Sparks JL and Blackstone NT (2023) Measurement of diets that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, affordable, and equitable: A scoping review of metrics, findings, and research gaps. Front. Nutr. 10:1125955. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2023.1125955

Introduction: Research on the impacts of dietary patterns on human and planetary health is a rapidly growing field. A wide range of metrics, datasets, and analytical techniques has been used to explore the role of dietary choices/constraints in driving greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, environmental degradation, health and disease outcomes, and the affordability of food baskets. Many argue that each domain is important, but few have tackled all simultaneously in analyzing diet-outcome relationships.

Methods: This paper reviews studies published between January 2015 and December 2021 (inclusive) that examined dietary patterns in relation to at least two of the following four thematic pillars: (i) planetary health, including, climate change, environmental quality, and natural resource impacts, (ii) human health and disease, (iii) economic outcomes, including diet cost/affordability, and (iv) social outcomes, e.g., wages, working conditions, and culturally relevant diets. We systematically screened 2,425 publications by title and abstract and included data from 42 eligible publications in this review.

Results: Most dietary patterns used were statistically estimated or simulated rather than observed. A rising number of studies consider the cost/affordability of dietary scenarios in relation to optimized environmental and health outcomes. However, only six publications incorporate social sustainability outcomes, which represents an under-explored dimension of food system concerns.

Discussion: This review suggests a need for (i) transparency and clarity in datasets used and analytical methods; (ii) explicit integration of indicators and metrics linking social and economic issues to the commonly assessed diet-climate-planetary ecology relationships; (iii) inclusion of data and researchers from low- and middle-income countries; (iv) inclusion of processed food products to reflect the reality of consumer choices globally; and (v) attention to the implications of findings for policymakers. Better understanding is urgently needed on dietary impacts on all relevant human and planetary domains simultaneously.

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1125955/full#supplementary-material

*Correspondence: Patrick Webb, patrick.webb@tufts.edu

Food and food-related waste management strategies in hospital food services: A systematic review (2022)

Cook N, Goodwin D, Porter J, Collins J. Food and food-related waste management strategies in hospital food services: A systematic review. Nutrition & Dietetics. 2022;1‐27. doi:10.1111/1747-0080.12768COOKET AL.27

Open access link to article: 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1747-0080.12768

Relevant to: 

Foodservice dietitians, sustainability dietitians, foodservice manager and workers

Question: 

  • What are hospital foodservices around the world currently doing to manage their food waste more sustainably?
  • What are the financial, environmental and staffing outcomes associated with these activities?
  • And what were the barriers and enablers to implementing these strategies?

Bottom line for nutrition practice: 

  • Divert surplus edible food and inedible food waste from landfill by using the most appropriate management strategy available.

Abstract: 

  • Aim – This review explored peer-reviewed and grey literature to describe the types and characteristics of food or food-related waste management strategies used in hospital food service settings; their financial, environmental and staffing outcomes; and the barriers and enablers associated with their implementation.
  • Methods – Six electronic databases, 17 Google Advanced searches, and 19 targeted websites were searched for peer-reviewed and grey literature. Literature reporting the financial, environmental, or staffing outcomes of food or food-related waste management strategies that reused, recovered energy from, or recycled waste instead of sending it to landfill were eligible. Document screening and review were completed in duplicate, and included peer-reviewed literature were assessed for quality using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Data were synthesised narratively.
  • Results – Four peer-reviewed and 81 grey literature records reported 85 strategies. When grouped from most to least favourable according to the food recovery hierarchy they managed waste by: donating surplus food (n = 21); feeding animals (n = 2); industrial use (n = 11); composting (n = 34) and other (n = 17). These approaches had the capacity to reduce waste hauling fees (n = 14), reduce staff handling of waste (n = 3), and decrease the amount of waste sent to landfill (n = 85). Barriers included contamination of waste streams, while enablers included leadership and time-neutral changes.
  • Conclusion – This review summarises the waste management strategies used by hospitals worldwide that divert food and food-related waste from landfill, their outcomes, and position in the food recovery hierarchy to enable hospital food services to implement appropriate practice and policy changes to decrease their environmental footprint.

Details of results: 

  • 85 examples of hospital foodservices were found to be diverting their food waste from landfill more sustainably.
  • When grouped from most to least favourable according to the food recovery hierarchy they managed waste by: donating surplus food (n = 21); feeding animals (n = 2); industrial use (n = 11); composting (n = 34) and other (n = 17).
  • The location of these strategies diverting waste were in hospital foodservices (n = 41), cafeteria (n = 7), CPK (n = 2), catering unit (n = 1) or combination of these settings (n = 18).
  • Financial savings ranged from AUD $400-50,000 from waste disposal, equipment changes and labour use whereas costs ranged from AUD $1200-260,500 from food waste collection and installing procured equipment.
  • Landfill savings occurred in every case but notably the highest examples were annually: 18,1444 kgs being donated, 200 tons composted and 360 digested.
  • Other environmental outcomes included reduced carbon emissions, water savings, energy creation and less transport.
  • Staffing outcomes were less waste handling and less time cleaning, however also involved giving staff more responsibility to separate, transport waste and operate equipment.
  • The major reported barriers were contamination, times demands, equipment problems, stakeholder coordination and staff resistance, whereas enablers were leadership, no increase in time, easy equipment use, data and a return on investments.

Of additional interest: 

Collection of research on food waste measurement by this group on Google Scholar

Conflict of interest/ Funding:  

Prof. Judi Porter is Editor-in-Chief of Nutrition & Dietetics. She was excluded from the peer-review process and all decision making regarding this article. This manuscript has been managed throughout the review process by the Journal’s Editor. The Journal operates a blinded peer review process and the peer reviewers for this manuscript were unaware of the authors of the manuscript. This process prevents authors who also hold an editorial role to influence the editorial decisions made. All authors are in agreement with the manuscript and declare that the content has not been published elsewhere. Other authors declare no conflicts of interest. NC received a departmental scholarship for his Ph.D. from Monash University’s Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food, and a King and Amy O’Malley Trust Scholarship during this study.

External relevant links:  

USA EPA Food recovery hierarchy.

Corresponding author: 

Mr. Nathan Cook, Nathan.cook@monash.edu

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