Testing Food Waste Reduction Targets:  Integrating Transition Scenarios with Macro-Valuation in an Urban Living Lab

Daniel Black; Taoyuan Wei; Eleanor Eaton; Alistair Hunt; Joy Carey; Ulrich Schmutz; Bingzi He; Ian Roderick

doi:10.3390/su15076004

Testing Food Waste Reduction Targets: Integrating Transition Scenarios with Macro-Valuation in an Urban Living Lab

Daniel Black
, Taoyuan Wei
, Eleanor Eaton
, Alistair Hunt
, Joy Carey
, Ulrich Schmutz
, Bingzi He
, Ian Roderick

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

Daniel Black + Associates|db+a
University of Bristol
Centre for International Climate Research
University of Bath
Bristol Food Network
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The Schumacher Institute

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

90 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Bristol, one of the United Kingdom’s (UK) nine Core Cities, is seeking to achieve Zero Waste City status by 2049. This study combines macro-economic valuation with transition pathway mapping and adapted participatory scenario planning to stress test the city’s ambitious food waste targets. The primary aim is to enable better understanding of who might be affected by achieving these targets, both locally and nationally, the potential scale of impacts, and therefore the potential barriers and policy opportunities. The valuation focuses on household and commercial food waste, combining available site and city data with national level proxies. Impact areas include changes in sectoral income, employee income, capital owner income, tax revenue, and carbon emissions. Four scenarios, based on two extreme cases, are modelled to consider food waste reduction and potential shifts in consumption patterns. Results indicate that current market and governance failures incentivise waste, and suggest potential routes to transition, including trade-offs and resource reallocation, alongside the need to acknowledge and respond to these profound structural barriers. With further development and testing, the approach may contribute to a better understanding of how to achieve city socioenvironmental targets.

Original language	English
Article number	6004
Number of pages	20
Journal	Sustainability
Volume	15
Issue number	7
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/su15076004
Publication status	Published - 30 Mar 2023

Bibliographical note

Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/)

Funding

This research his research received funding from the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant # 730254) within the Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative (SUGI) from JPI Urban Europe. The SUGI Food Water Energy (FWE) Nexus was established by the Belmont Forum and the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe and included 20 funders globally. Funders who directly supported this project were: InnovateUK, Economic and Social Research Council and Arts and Humanities Research Council Award # ES/S002243/1 (UK); START International\u2014USA (South Africa); Sao Paulo Science and Technology Funding Agency (FAPESP), Award # 2017/50421-3 (Brazil); National Science Foundation Award # 1830104 (USA); The Research Council of Norway (Norway); Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk (NOW) Award # 438-17-405 (Netherlands); and Research Council of Norway (Grant # 284599). These funders had no involvement in the design, data handling, or writing of this publication. This paper was developed following a three-year international research project, WASTE FEW ULL\u2014a Food\u2013Energy\u2013Water (FEW) ULL\u2014which aimed to identify and reduce inefficiencies in the urban FEW \u201CNexus\u201D\u2014i.e., the interrelationship between these three core resource flows across four ULLs in Bristol (UK), Sao Paolo (Brazil), Western Cape (South Africa), and Rotterdam (the Netherlands). The consortium was funded by the Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative (SUGI), a global network of funders convened jointly by JPI Urban Europe and the Belmont Forum []. Its focus was on challenges \u201Cconnected with population increase and food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources demand solutions\u201D in order \u201Cto increase the access and the quality of life\u201D. It had a specific goal of sustainable consumption [] and resides firmly within conceptual challenge areas of Ecological Public Health, One Health, or Planetary Health. Details of the consortium and the Bristol ULL are provided in the and can be accessed via the website and linked publications [,,].

Funders	Funder number
Economic and Social Research Council	ES/S002243/1
National Science Foundation	1830104
Horizon Europe	730254
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo	2017/50421-3
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek	438-17-405
The Research Council of Norway	284599
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Innovate UK
START International

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production

Keywords

food waste
urban governance
societal impact
urban health
transition pathways
barrier identification
participatory scenario planning
valuation
macro-economics
systems thinking

Access to Document

10.3390/su15076004Licence: CC BY

PublishedFinal published version, 2.23 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Testing Food Waste Reduction Targets: Integrating Transition Scenarios with Macro-Valuation in an Urban Living Lab",

abstract = "Bristol, one of the United Kingdom{\textquoteright}s (UK) nine Core Cities, is seeking to achieve Zero Waste City status by 2049. This study combines macro-economic valuation with transition pathway mapping and adapted participatory scenario planning to stress test the city{\textquoteright}s ambitious food waste targets. The primary aim is to enable better understanding of who might be affected by achieving these targets, both locally and nationally, the potential scale of impacts, and therefore the potential barriers and policy opportunities. The valuation focuses on household and commercial food waste, combining available site and city data with national level proxies. Impact areas include changes in sectoral income, employee income, capital owner income, tax revenue, and carbon emissions. Four scenarios, based on two extreme cases, are modelled to consider food waste reduction and potential shifts in consumption patterns. Results indicate that current market and governance failures incentivise waste, and suggest potential routes to transition, including trade-offs and resource reallocation, alongside the need to acknowledge and respond to these profound structural barriers. With further development and testing, the approach may contribute to a better understanding of how to achieve city socioenvironmental targets.",

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