Million Tons of Food can be Now Saved with Enhanced Logistics Systems

It is difficult to gather the real scale of food waste in Europe. In 2012, the expenses associated with food waste in the EU were calculated at around 143 billion euros. “The volume of food that is dumped away now-a-days is incredible. Most of the food waste comes in a close second. By tweaking the logistics systems, we can estimate that the food maintains fine quality and lasts as long as possible when it is out in the store,” says Kristina Lijestrand.

This is where Kristina Lijestrand’s research comes into function. She holds a PhD from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. In present years, she has identified how companies in the food supply chain can perform to reduce their environment impact in terms of both food emissions and waste from transports.

Her work is special in numerous ways since a logistics enhancement action to overcome the waste problem is a relatively unexplored region. There is no overview of methods that the companies in the supply chain can diminish waste, but this is something that Lijestrand delivers in her doctoral studies.

“The logistics systems that combine together from the production of food product to the products on the store shelves, we need to comprehend how to work here to diminish food waste,” she says. Through a wide study among Swedish producers, retailers, and wholesalers, she has identified nine enhancement actions.

“I illustrate the enhancement actions, the logistic activities, and what players are involved. The compilation can be witnessed as a buffet for those who want to function to reduce food waste,” she says. A vital conclusion is that association throughout the food supply chain is critical.

“Numerous stages of the food chain are involved when it is about waste, making it difficult for a single company functioning alone to reduce it. Association is essential to create powerful systems that span from beginning to end so that the products made from food reach the stores in time,” she says.

In the concluding part of her research, Lijestrand analysed how the environmental impact from transports in the food logistics system can be diminished. By considering at aspects like load factor and the portion of intermodal transports, she identified that shipments are most efficient to work with, and the finest method of doing this.

This resulted in numerous frameworks that offer great help in the urge to diminish transport emissions. “Numerous logistics systems are highly intricate and large, and it can be difficult to know where to begin. The frameworks that I introduced offer companies tools that allow them to see what factors in their logistics system affect transport emissions,” she says