Waste food reduction as a way to reduce resources and energy consumption in the Italian industrial sector: an IO-LCA analysis

Abstract

Food production involves both agricultural and industrial activities which consume several resources among which: water, energy, land, minerals and chemicals. The efficiency in the use of the resources depends on the type of food which is produced and the adopted processes. In any case if food is discarded or lost at any step of the supply chain this represents a waste of energy and resources. For this reason, the LIFE project irexfo, coordinated by the University of Perugia has proposed a way to promote a business model aiming at both: the reduction of food losses and also the reuse of the not comestible food waste in biogas plants. The model has been tested in Umbria as a pilot region and in this study the results obtained are scaled up to a national level and applied to the Italian IO database reported in the EXIOBASE, to evaluate which could be the benefits of the application of the irexfo business model to the whole Italian agroindustry sector and also the interrelations between this sector and the Italian energy sector. The analysis is performed using SimaPro software 9.0, results are compared with those of similar studies which have been performed at European level. This is the first study of this kind focused on Italy.