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Piergiuseppe Morone Franka Papendiek Valentina Elena Tartiu Editors Food Waste Reduction and Valorisation Sustainability Assessment and Policy Analysis

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Piergiuseppe Morone Franka PapendiekValentina Elena Tartiu Editors

Food Waste Reduction and ValorisationSustainability Assessment and Policy Analysis

Food Waste Reduction and Valorisation

Piergiuseppe Morone • Franka PapendiekValentina Elena TartiuEditors

Food Waste Reductionand ValorisationSustainability Assessment and Policy Analysis

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EditorsPiergiuseppe MoroneDepartment of Law and EconomicsUnitelma SapienzaRomeItaly

Franka PapendiekAbteilung Forschung | ResearchPolicy Unit

German Council of Scienceand Humanities

CologneGermany

Valentina Elena TartiuTIK Centre for Technology,Innovation and Culture

University of OsloOsloNorway

ISBN 978-3-319-50087-4 ISBN 978-3-319-50088-1 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50088-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959520

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or partof the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmissionor information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilarmethodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in thispublication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt fromthe relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in thisbook are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor theauthors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein orfor any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer NatureThe registered company is Springer International Publishing AGThe registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Global economic and population growth trends are placing pressures upon naturalresources threatening future economic and social development. Most notably, theworld population, standing on 7.2 billion people in mid-2014, is projected toincrease by almost one billion people within the next decade, and further to 9.6billion in 2050 (United Nations 2013). At the same time, large and fast-growingeconomies (i.e. the BRICS members) will experience increasing wealth. A majorconsequence of these two trends is higher consumption and demand for food andother goods, increasing in parallel the rate of waste production and depleting theamount of available resources (e.g. demand for several elements, including helium,phosphorus, indium and gallium is predicted to exceed supply in the near future).Overarching all of these issues is the threat of climate change and the concernsabout how mitigation and adaptation measures may affect the food system(Schmidhuber and Tubiello 2007; Godfray et al. 2010).

Scientists, analysts and policy makers are taking stock of these trends, trying topush the society towards more sustainable development patterns. An emerging areaof enquiry looks with growing interest at food waste reduction and valorisation as akey area of research to provide answers to these emerging challenges. In fact, thevalorisation of food waste has many advantages. It is a rich source of functionalisedmolecules (i.e. biopolymers, protein, carbohydrates, phytochemicals) and containsvaluable extracts for various applications (e.g. resins from cashew nut shell liquid),avoiding the use of virgin land and water resources. In addition, it solves a wastemanagement issue and represents a sustainable renewable resource; making thevalorisation of food waste doubly green.

Moving from this, the 15 chapters included in this book address these emergingsocietal challenges building on the idea that food waste reduction and valorisation isfundamental for promoting environmental, economic and social sustainability, inthe framework of the growing interdependence between human societies and thenatural environment.

The plurality of perspectives considered gives a truly transdisciplinary angle tothe book. Indeed, the proposed book is the outcome of rather fertile networking andresearch activities conducted over the last years by a broad group of experts,

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coming from different disciplines, most of whom where partnering in the COSTaction TD1203 on Food Waste Valorisation for Sustainable Chemicals, Materialsand Fuels (EUBis) initiated by Prof. James Clark (head of the Green ChemistryCentre of Excellence at the University of York) back in 2012 and that successfullyended on the 22 November 2016.

Within the COST Action TD1203, the fourth working group, in which theeditors of this book took part, dealt specifically with ‘Technical & SustainabilityAssessment and Policy Analysis’, focusing on the economic assessment of alter-native innovative technologies, including supply logistics and feasibility evaluationof green processes at the industrial level, whilst also exploring the environmentaland social impacts of the valorisation technologies.

The book opens with an introductory chapter by James Clark, presenting thegenesis, the purpose, and the scope of the work and setting out a roadmap to guidethe readers through the book, underlying the common thread linking the remaining14 chapters comprised in the book.

We hope this book will contribute in shedding new light on social,techno-economic and policy related issues concerning food waste reduction andvalorisation, paving the way to new research in this field of enquiry.

Rome, Italy Piergiuseppe MoroneCologne, Germany Franka PapendiekOslo, Norway Valentina Elena Tartiu

References

Godfray HCJ et al (2010) Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Science327:812–818

Schmidhuber J, Tubiello F (2007) Global food security under climate change. PNAS 104(50):19703– 19708

United Nations (2013) World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, New York

vi Preface

Contents

Part I Sustainability Assessment

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3James Clark

2 Cutting Through the Challenge of Improving the ConsumerExperience of Foods by Enabling the Preparation of SustainableMeals and the Reduction of Food Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Wayne Martindale

3 The Economic Case for the Circular Economy: From Food Wasteto Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Corrado Topi and Magdalena Bilinska

4 Decreasing Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Meat ProductsThrough Food Waste Reduction. A Framework for aSustainability Assessment Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Thomas Winkler and Ralf Aschemann

5 Fodder Legumes for Green Biorefineries: A Perspectivefor Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Franka Papendiek

6 Municipal Waste Treatment, Technological Scale upand Commercial Exploitation: The Case of Bio-wasteLignin to Soluble Lignin-like Polymers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Enzo Montoneri

7 Techno-Economic Study and Environmental Assessmentof Food Waste Based Biorefinery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121Aude Pommeret, Xiaofeng Yang, Tsz Him Kwan,Elias A. Christoforou, Paris A. Fokaides and Carol Sze Ki Lin

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8 Techno-Economic Evaluation of Refining of Food Supply ChainWastes for the Production of Chemicals and Biopolymers. . . . . . . . 147Anestis Vlysidis, Apostolis Koutinas and Ioannis Kookos

Part II Regulation and Policy Analysis

9 Bio-Based Economy: Policy Framework and ForesightThinking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167Luana Ladu and Rainer Quitzow

10 Bringing a Sharing Economy Approach into the FoodSector: The Potential of Food Sharing for ReducingFood Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197Pasquale Marcello Falcone and Enrica Imbert

11 Defining the Meaning of Food Waste as a Matter of Urgency . . . . . 215Monica Delsignore, Margherita Ramajoli and Carola Ricci

12 Waste Reduction in Fresh Food Supply Chains: An OperationsResearch Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235Gabriella Dellino, Renato Mari and Carlo Meloni

13 Participatory Planning in Organic Solid WasteManagement: A Backcasting Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261Roberta Sisto, Edgardo Sica, Mariarosaria Lombardiand Maurizio Prosperi

14 The Role of Social Networks in the Diffusion of Bio-WasteProducts: The Case of Mulching Films Derived from OrganicWaste in Province of Foggia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279Angela Barbuto, Antonio Lopolito, Myriam Anna Scaringelliand Giacomo Giannoccaro

15 Grassroots Innovations and the Transition TowardsSustainability: Tackling the Food Waste Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303Valentina Elena Tartiu and Piergiuseppe Morone

viii Contents

Part ISustainability Assessment

Chapter 1Introduction

James Clark

Abstract The importance of waste as a future feedstock for the chemical and alliedindustries is considered. In particular food supply chain waste is identified as avaluable source of useful chemical functions. While waste can contribute toresources globally it is likely to have an especially strong role in the industrialdevelopment of the emerging economies.

Keywords Waste � Food waste � Bio-resources � Bio-based chemicals � Recycling

Waste is a major global issue and is becoming more important in developingcountries, such as the B(razil)R(ussia)I(ndia)C(hina)S(outh Africa) nations, as wellas in Europe. According to the World Bank, world cities generate about 1.3 billiontonnes (1.3 GT) of solid waste per year. This is expected to increase to 2.2 GT by2025. Waste generation rates will more than double over the next twenty years inlower income countries. Globally, solid waste management costs will increase fromtoday’s annual ca. $200 billion to close to $400 billion in 2025. Cost increases willbe most severe in low income countries (more than 5-fold increases) andlower-middle income countries (more than 4-fold increases). Global governmentsneed to put in place programmes to reduce, reuse, recycle or recover as much wasteas possible before burning it (and recovering the energy) or otherwise disposing of it.

Waste can be categorised into industrial, agricultural, sanitary and solid urbanresidues, based on its origin. The distribution of the content of these waste streamschanges significantly from country to country so that any figures have to be treatedwith caution. What is clear is that few countries have a positive waste managementpolicy involving significant waste valorisation (although reliable data are not easilyavailable from developing countries other than anecdotal evidence that in somecountries such as India many people may make a basic living from collecting andselling waste). To make matters worse, there is a growing concern over the long

J. Clark (&)Department of Chemistry, Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence,University of York, York, UKe-mail: [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017P. Morone et al. (eds.), Food Waste Reduction and Valorisation,DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50088-1_1

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term availability of many critical substances. It is not simply a desire to move awayfrom non-renewable fossil resources as sources of carbon, as quickly as possible (aswas reaffirmed by all nations in the most recent Paris Climate Change Conference)we also need to review our use of many other elements in the periodic table. TheEuropean Union (EU) has identified a critical element list since the demand forseveral essential elements, including helium, phosphorus, indium and gallium ispredicted to exceed supply in the near future. As with fossil sources of carbon, weare not necessarily running out of global reserves of any elements but we havealready taken the easiest pickings. The more recent petroleum extractions in areassuch as the Gulf of Mexico have begun to demonstrate the high price–both envi-ronmentally and economically–that we will have to pay for continuing to depend onthese traditional resources. Such increased awareness of resource depletion and thecatastrophic influence it could have on economies is beginning to make peoplerealise that the traditional linear economy model of extract-process-consume-dispose is unsustainable and that instead we need to move towards a circulareconomy whereby we make use of the resources in articles that have reached theend of their useful life or are simply rejected by the owner. We need to keep allsubstances in use over much longer periods, ultimately aiming for zero wastewhereby everything is kept as a resource either via moderate length natural cyclessuch as for carbon (I would suggest typically less than the average human lifetime)or via man-made processes such as for minerals.

Waste produced by food processing companies is a good example of apre-consumer type of waste generated on a large scale all over the world butsomething that also represents a source of valuable substances, notably functionalorganic molecules that otherwise we have to build up from hydrocarbons (involvingchemical processes that consume more resource and generate even more waste).Food supply chain waste can easily account for more than 50% of the total wasteproduced in many countries. Some 60% of food waste is organic matter which canbe a public safety issue if not managed properly. More effort has gone into efficientwaste treatment and disposal than waste valorisation. In fact food waste is a richsource of functionalised molecules (i.e. biopolymers, protein, carbohydrates, phy-tochemicals) and contains valuable extracts ranging from terpenes in citrus waste tophenolics in winery waste and with applications from food additives to solvents andbio-based chemicals. Various waste streams contain valuable compounds, includingantioxidants, which could be recovered, concentrated and re-used in applicationssuch as food and lubricants additives. Avoiding the use of virgin land and waterresources to produce non-food products is a further major advantage especially aswe have become wary of the hidden costs from 1st generation biofuels that com-mitted large areas of arable land to non-food production leading to distortions in thefood markets. In addition, food waste valorisation solves a waste management issueand represents a sustainable renewable resource; making the valorisation of foodwaste doubly green. Despite this there are few large volume commercial examplesthat show us how to get away from or supplement landfilling or first-generationlow-value, recycling practices such as composting, animal feed production and/orre-use of organic matter.

4 J. Clark

In terms of economic competitiveness it is essential that we seek to promoteadvanced methods to process food waste residues in order to produce high addedvalue and readily marketable end-products. We also need society to undergo amajor change of mentality and perception on waste seeing it more as a resourcerather than a pollution problem. Such a paradigm shift needs to be steered bygovernments and trans-government agencies worldwide as well as through edu-cation at all levels. One strong incentive for change is the increase in costs of wastedisposal: the EU landfill Directive, for example, has caused landfill gate fees tosubstantially increase. We need to properly assess the environmental and economicimpacts of food waste valorisation and properly assess the sustainability indicatorsthat should be used to monitor the impact of this approach.

This book aims at addressing this very new area of enquiry, building on the ideathat food waste reduction and valorisation is a crucial factor to promote sustain-ability and with significant value in chemical manufacturing and other criticalindustries. In the first part of the book, we look at sustainability assessment from anumber of different perspectives. This includes impacts on climate change, and onthe production of high value chemicals and other useful products. We use the ‘threepillars’ of sustainability–environmental, economic, and social, each with its ownspecific features. Seven chapters give an overview of available strategies to assessindicators for food waste reduction and valorisation and also of useful tools tofacilitate the comparison between the three pillars of sustainability. We look at realexamples of where food waste has been converted to valuable fuels, chemicals andmaterials, going beyond ‘first generation’ products such as compost and energyfrom burning or anaerobic digestion (useful though these may be in the overall zerowaste bio-refinery, we must try to capture some if not all of that wonderfulmolecular value in food waste).

The sustainability assessment of food waste reduction and valorisation is com-plemented with another layer of assessment: policy analysis, aimed at identifyingthe drivers of change of food waste reduction and valorisation technologies, bylooking, for instance, at the regulatory framework and at policy actions undertakenby local and global actors. A further seven chapters cover food waste under the law,policy analysis and how we can lower the barriers that inhibit the implementation ofthe circular economy.

The development of knowledge-based strategies to unlock the enormouspotential of food waste can help satisfy an increasing demand for renewablysourced products, leading to sustainable, bio-derived chemicals, fuels and materials,and probably effecting waste management regulations over the years to come. Thevalorisation of food supply chain waste is necessary in order to improve the sus-tainability and cost-effectiveness of food supply. Together with the associatedethical and environmental issues and the drivers for utilising waste, the pressuresfor such changes are becoming very powerful.

Our future as a flourishing, creative and increasingly affluent society is com-pletely dependent on how we treat the limited resources we have available to us onthis one beautiful but finite planet. If we try to apply the same resource exploitationmodel we have used in the developed world to the whole world then we will quite

1 Introduction 5

simply consume ourselves out of existence. Whether the tipping point is one of themany pollution impacts we are becoming aware of or based on an economicmeltdown due to ‘resource wars’, is a moot point. Food waste is an exemplar of thechallenge we face; if we both see it as a resource opportunity rather than a wastethreat and apply our creative science and technological energies to its valorisation,we show the way to other waste-to-resource opportunities. There has never been abetter time to see that ‘where there’s waste there’s wealth’.

6 J. Clark

Chapter 2Cutting Through the Challengeof Improving the ConsumerExperience of Foods by Enablingthe Preparation of Sustainable Mealsand the Reduction of Food Waste

Wayne Martindale

Abstract The communication of sustainability and Corporate SocialResponsibility measurements by food industry campaigns has identified key areasof activity that dominate sustainable thinking in the food industry. The purpose ofthis chapter is to show that one of these areas of activity, the intensity of resourceuse and resulting food waste, can be used as a universal connector of sustainabilitypractice across supply chains and between them. This requires an assessment offood waste production because it is an attribute consumers are familiar with and assuch; these connectors are often overshadowed by high-level issues such as globalfood security, climate change and the loss of biodiversity. While these high-levelissues rightly dominate the policy arena they will often take the attention away fromissues that practically relate sustainability to us as consumers when we prepare,present, preserve and consume three or four meals a day. This situation presents amajor challenge that is tackled here by providing sustainability and security metricsthat relate to meals. The Six-Function-Model (6fm) is a model developed to assessthe sustainability of food and it can be used to overcome the stifling of sustainabilitythinking by methods that do not enable practical application in retail, kitchen andrestaurant situations. The use of the 6fm by manufacturers, retailers and consumerswill stimulate the ‘designing-in’ of sustainability attributes into meals. The modeland a benchmarking analysis of the 6fm are presented here to account for resourceuse and food waste associated with meals. The future goal of 6fm is to stimulate theuse of it in the food and beverage industry so that it ‘builds-in’ sustainable thinkingto product design and consumer experience.

Keywords Sustainability � Consumption � Consumers � Responsibility �Consumer goods

W. Martindale (&)Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University,Sheffield, S1 1WB, UKe-mail: [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017P. Morone et al. (eds.), Food Waste Reduction and Valorisation,DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50088-1_2

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2.1 Introduction

The development of the Six-Function-Model (6fm) for the sustainability andsecurity assessment of meals is derived from ground-breaking work that hascombined expertise from academic and industrial sectors. This was initiated by thedevelopment of methodologies that have assessed how consumers purchase, pre-pare and utilise food for each meal (Martindale 2014a). This type of approach notonly identified sustainability criteria associated with meals, it also provided specificinsight into the ‘values attributes’ consumers associated with meals. This supplychain focussed methodology has been refined by using a model of household foodwaste production from different preserved food categories (Martindale 2014b).These studies have demonstrated that food waste can be reduced by half inhouseholds if resource use is optimised using freezing as a means of food preser-vation. In demonstrating this, the requirement to understand how we consumersmake meals and associate values of convenience, taste and affordability with themwas identified. A model of food waste production from household meals presentedby Martindale (2014b), showed the impact of doing this was considerable becausefrozen preservation in households currently removes 5.5 million tonnes of house-hold food waste across the European Union for seafood, meat, fruit and vegetablefood product categories. This begins to establish the goal of achieving zerohousehold food waste when we consider frozen food purchases are lower volumethan fresh food purchases and consumer awareness of food preservation can becommunicated with greater impact if sustainability outcomes are utilised.

The goal is for the 6fm to enable manufacturers and retailers to communicate thesustainability credentials of meals and for us consumers to use the 6fm to actionsustainable meal choices. The 6fmmodel combines ‘values attributes’ and ‘technicalattributes’ associated with food choice in a model that is tested in this study withparticular focus on manufacturing scenarios that will provide an improved consumerexperience. This is because manufacturing is where the outcomes of understandingsustainability in product development are high-impact in the supply chain becausethey result in stronger manufacturer-retailer relationships and ultimately decide howa large proportion of consumers utilise food products for meals (Jones et al. 2014).Indeed, it is a control point and while the aim is for the 6fm to be used in all parts ofthe food supply chain it is important to identify control points in the test of 6fmpresented here. The approach is also to use 6fm to obtain feedback on the use offoods from consumers so that it can be used to re-design products for meals.

2.2 The Need for a New Approach in Creating ResourceEfficient Food Supply Chains

The ‘technical attributes’ include in the 6fm are those obtained by using carbonfootprinting and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods that are now well estab-lished in food industry sustainability practice (Hornibrook et al. 2013). Experience

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of delivering these carbon footprinting investigations with respect to consumertrends has most notably been obtained in the non-meat protein product marketplace(Martindale et al. 2014). These meat-replacer products dominate the emergentflexitarian markets and provide an important case-study where consumer ‘valuesattributes’ and LCA ‘technical attributes’ must be integrated for application (Greenet al. 2010). The need to assess the Greenhouse Gas Emission (GHG) credentials ofmeat and non-meat foods is an important aspect of meeting global sustainability andsecurity goals. It has provided the opportunity to begin to understand how we asconsumers interact with high-level sustainability measures such as eating less meat.While GHG reduction goals are important ‘technical attributes’ in the meatreduction debate, health issues dominate it and these are the ‘values attributes’ thatconsumers associate most favourably with (De Boer et al. 2013). This type ofscenario results in a complex decision framework of technical and consumer valuesassociated with choice of meat and non-meat products that has provided theindustry with important dietary models (Macdiarmid 2013). The debate on meatfree products has stimulated the growth in the flexitarian meal trend in Europe and ithas shown how food sustainability criteria can often force us to consider extendingscientific evidence to consumer values-driven goals (De Boer et al. 2014).

This work in the meat-free arena has enabled an understanding of trends in mar-ketplaces and the impact of dietary transitions on sustainability outcomes. This hasprovided insight into more realistic applications of carbon footprinting becausemodels show diets with lower GHG emissions that have lower meat with more freshfruit and vegetable content can result in greater production of household food waste(Martindale 2014a). Extending such LCA data to populations using consumptionmodels is important because they show us sustainability is not a single issue move-ment and it is dependent on several values with which scientific evidence mustinteract. This is precisely what the 6fm is aiming to achieve by enabling sustainabilitypractice for everyone rather than considering the challenge ‘too big’ to be solved.

The consumer issues associated with sustainability are often values-driven goalsthat are focussed on food choices that align with specific environmental issues.These often become a platform for policy development through channels such asthe activist programmes of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). This is animportant aspect of policy development for the food industry to understand becauseit does not always result in efficient consumer communications because the industryand consumers are often removed from developing them. Indeed, if scienceevidence-based and consumer values-based criteria do not align it creates a situationwhere there is a clash and the policy makers have to take the approach that evidencemust be adhered to at all costs, in which case consumer values can seem to beignored. The retailer to consumer relationship in the food supply chain is anothercontrol point challenge that the 6fm will tackle because it aims to create transparentmeasurement for sustainability criteria and communication. This is achieved, not bydeveloping feelings of guilt in consumer activities or aligning them to the goals ofNGO’s but to identify the benefit of using diverse food choices and preparationpractices that are sustainable and can be measured.

2 Cutting Through the Challenge of Improving … 9

The approach of 6fm has evolved because if we do fail to integrate trend-ledconsumer data into LCA methodologies we will stifle the use of sustainable prin-ciples by both industry and consumers alike. It is well known that LCA andfootprinting techniques do not integrate well with Fast Moving Consumer Good(FMCG) businesses because market trends and how consumers consume foods arerarely considered by them (O’Rourke 2014). Indeed, this is at the very core of the6fm approach, where we determine why consumers like a particular food and thenask, can that product be re-designed in a more sustainable or security conscious wayso that preparation and consumption aligns with these values. This approach willcommunicate the measures of sustainability and security criteria back into thesupply chain from consumers so that redesign can be applied. Standard or classicaltechniques of sustainability assessment such as carbon footprinting or LCA onlyidentify where criticality occurs and act by communicating reduction of con-sumption alone and I believe that this approach will not work. The 6fm offers analternative that can be used by producers, manufacturers, retailers and consumersfor an innovative and engaging redesign of practice.

An example of our challenge is provided with livestock products where LCAtechniques have shown they embody more energy and result in greater GHGemissions than consuming plant products directly because livestock consume cropproducts as feeds (Martindale 2014a). In this instance, a weakness of classical LCAis apparent because of two key factors;

• the diversity of livestock production enterprise types means that a single type ofLCA will never define the environmental impact of animal production;

• consumers will utilise varying amounts of protein and carbohydrate food groupsin meals and these are determined by lifestyle and preference.

In its simplest form these two factors can be described in the fact that comparingfeed-lot reared beef to grass-fed grazed beef is not possible; when the productionsystem is normalised, studies might be used to compare meat products but this israrely done (Ridoutt et al. 2011). Thus, the inflexibility of LCA creates confusionwhich is compounded by a complete misunderstanding of the functional unit usedto communicate LCA results which is usually kilograms of product and this doesnot easily relate to ingredients of meals.

This inflexibility of LCA in food FMCG supply chains results in organisationsreporting sustainability and security goals using biased data for specific causes. Forexample, when organisations have required the reporting of the more intensiveGHG measures for beef production they can use the energy intensive rearing forpremium markets such as Wagyu beef or production systems based in areas wheregrazing is limited by rainfall (Ogino et al. 2007). This does not represent an evi-dential view of all livestock production enterprises with respect to the diets weconsume. While efforts are made to provide normalised perspectives on diets thereis still much scope to improve (Garnett 2013). The changes in resource use intensityassociated with climate and different production systems are the very basis ofoptimal grazing and husbandry that are overlooked here. Indeed, the words of

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Norman Borlaug ring in our ears with ‘there are no miracles in agricultural pro-duction’, an understanding you can’t achieve optimal crop or livestock productionin areas where varieties and breeds are not suited-to, seems forgotten by someapplications of LCA. However, this happens time and time again for consumercommunications creating a confusion and a distrust of data and evidence in themarketplace.

As such, this leads us to observe that attempts to standardising diets, meals andfoods using LCA has potentially confused consumers by making comparisons ofdifferent food products when they should not be made. This has often only pro-moted values-driven communications that undermine sustainability and securitytargets globally. The 6fm approach breaks through the high-level issues such asmeat versus non-meat product use to consider how we as consumers make andconsume meals while still maintaining a line of evidence to sustainability andsecurity criteria. The 6fm structure differs from LCA in that it is designed to firstlyto benchmark and consider consumption in marketplaces. This approach willconsider meal portion and an outcome will be improved sustainability and reducedfood waste in meal preparation and consumption. Finally, the 6fm develops ameasure of sustainability and security that can be used as a dash-board measure-ment or index within businesses or homes that wish to respond to sustainability andsecurity criteria by redesigning product or meal formats.

2.3 The Six Function Model Approachto Assessing Food Use

The six function model (6fm) method presented here tackles two key themes thathave vexed food sustainability and security thinking for several years and these are:

• Measuring the potential to provide an adequate supply of nutrients in foods weenjoy as consumers that are accessible, affordable and assured (as the estab-lished ‘Triple A’ standard).

• Developing resource efficient ways of guiding us to consume sustainable meals(Martindale 2014a).

The identification of these themes has been made possible by mapping foodsupply chain sustainability attributes and identifying areas where there are likely tobe the most effective resource utilisation gains. While many organisations considerthis too complex a task we have obtained data on food supply chains from foodmanufacturers in semi-structured interviews regarding resource use and wastereduction that have a benchmark that is practical and usable in situ. The need forthis has identified six functions in food supply chains that have resulted in devel-oping the 6fm. It is based on a food supply chain model which is shown in Fig. 2.1,which demonstrates how the 6fm methodology interacts with supply chainoperators.

2 Cutting Through the Challenge of Improving … 11

Figure 2.1, shows the four production, manufacture, retailer and consumeroperators of the food supply chain and where the six functions of the 6fm operate init to provide a measure of sustainability and security. The 6fm benchmarks meals interms of energy and resources used in accessing foods, preparing meals andpreparing what we eat. The 6fm functions described here are shown in their typicalrole of influence in Fig. 2.1, for each supply chain operation (i.e. production,manufacture, retail or consumption) together with the principle skill-sets thatdominate in these supply chain operations (i.e. engineering, design or consumers).The six functions have been in part selected through my experience of deliveringsustainability research projects that have carbon footprinted individual food prod-ucts, mapped food supply chains and assessed the impact of consumer use of foodsin making meals (Martindale 2014a). They represent a practical set of functions thatcan be used to measure the sustainability of meals and they were selected using thefeedback from semi-structured interviews with food industry professionals. Thegoal reflected in the supply chain model in Fig. 2.1, is that the 6fm will be used bythe whole food supply chain from producers through to consumers to create a muchgreater understanding of both security and sustainability associated with mealchoices. The six functions of the 6fm whose operation is shown in Fig. 2.1, are asfollows.

1. Import and export volumes of ingredients (I + E). These are based on tradedvolumes of food ingredients and commodities that are available fromFAOSTAT. The volumes determine pressure points and these can be used toproject trends when compared to the national crop or livestock yield per unitarea data. Tailored ingredient folios would be used for specific manufacturersand they highlight mass-flow sensitivity in delivering food to consumers.

Fig. 2.1 The supply chain approach of the 6fm is shown here. The supply chain operators ofproducer, processor and manufacturer, retailer, distributor, wholesaler; and, consumer are shown ina linear function. The 6fm enables feedback across the whole supply chain as shown in the modeldeveloped by Martindale (2014a)

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2. Nitrogenous fertilisers utilised in production of ingredients (Nproduction).The assimilation of nitrogen into protein is dependent on the production of bothorganic and mineral fertilisers. The function is based on typical nitrogenrequirements for crops and livestock that is quantified using the fertiliser rec-ommendations for crop ingredients and feed conversion factors for livestockingredients. Nitrogen requirements are well tested and reviewed by Smil (2002)and in this context plant proteins are given a value of 1.0, and livestock productsare multiple of this with fish or seafood meat being 1.5, chicken meat being 2.3,pig meat being 5.9, beef meat being 12.7, eggs being 3.8 and milk being 0.7using feed conversion ratios. Nitrogen use is a convenient function for foodbecause it is converted into protein and accounts for up to a third of the energybalance of the production operator of the food supply chain, it is typically a thirdof the agricultural energy balance.

The first two functions are concerned with producers and the producer-to-manufacturer and processor relationship within the supply chain model presented inFig. 2.1. The first and second functions assess the production of ingredients.

3. Protein content of the food ingredient used in meals (Pcontent). This is a keydeterminant of dietary security, it is based on the ability of meals to provide800 mg of protein per kg of body weight per day and represents the point in the6fm where ingredients are constructed into meals (Martindale 2014a). A keyquality determinant of meals are their protein content, this is emphasised in the6fm because protein supply is a critical component of maintaining food security.Protein values of foods are benchmarked with plant proteins are given a value of10 and livestock products are multiple of this with fish or seafood meat being18, chicken meat being 20, pig meat being 14, beef meat being 15, eggs being13 and milk being 3.5 based on edible protein content (Smil 2002).

4. The micronutrient content of the food ingredient (Microcontent). Thefunctional nutritional properties of foods are classically determined by protein,fat and carbohydrate content. Meta-analysis of micronutrient contents have beenused to guide the benchmarking process for this function. However, the range ofmicronutrients is extensive and often misrepresented (Brandt et al. 2013). Thismeans the micronutrient value of meals is not easily communicated to con-sumers and we require a robust indicator of micronutrient nutrition for thisfunction. We have chosen to use the social or value-attributes in the selectioncriteria for measuring micronutrients. The use of the Google Trends tool hasidentified that ‘Vitamin C’, ‘Vitamin D’ and ‘essential fatty acid’ are the termsthat have greatest social interest for a range of micronutrients. The 6fm isreflective of consumer awareness and we have used these trends to measure thebenchmark for this function. Thus, Vitamin C, Vitamin D and essential fattyacid content are the micronutrients used to benchmark this function and themicronutrients used can change in respect to trends identified. This function isthe one within 6fm that is subject to greatest change by users because of the

2 Cutting Through the Challenge of Improving … 13

changes in trends and Google Trends manages syntax searches to standardisethe approach of selecting the trends.

The third and fourth functions are concerned with manufacturers and retailersrelationship within the supply chain model presented in Fig. 2.1. The third andfourth functions measure the use of ingredients in meals to provide quality attri-butes, in this case protein and micronutrient nutrition. Notably the quality qualifierterms are determined by Google Trends citation volumes.

5. The energy utilised by the supply chain that delivers foods from farm toconsumer (Esupply). The embodied energy of supply provides and importantindicator of food affordability and efficiency. The energy consumed in pro-ducing; processing and manufacturing; and, distributing and retailing foods iswell characterised with peer review and open-access data-bases (Nielsen et al.2003). The 6fm uses this data to assess the amount of energy consumed in thesupply chain to produce specific meals. This is reflected in LCA data where theproducts are produced in manufacturing arenas and the data reported considersenergy used to the point of sale by a retailer (Wallén et al. 2004).

6. The energy utilised in preparing and consuming foods for meals (Eprep).This is the area of the supply chain that is often disregarded because of thecomplex decisions that take place during food preparation and consumption.Our approach has been to simplify this decision based system to assess specific‘flagship’ meals and in this test of the 6fm we select six meals shown inTable 2.1, that are selected to represent different culinary management themarketplace. Eprep is a critical point of the 6fm model because the supply chainprior to preparation of meals is well understood through the application of LCAand carbon footprinting. The 6fm extends this understanding to meal preparationusing meal groups with an assessment of ingredients and food waste. Table 2.1,also considers food waste intensity from different meal types because waste is acritical part of the energy balance for the consumer experience.

The fifth and sixth functions are concerned with consumers and theretailer-to-consumer relationship within the supply chain model presented inFig. 2.1. The functions measure the use of meals in diet and lifestyle, they areindicative of the food experience of the consumer.

2.4 Testing the Six Function Model

The testing of the 6fm has been framed using the six specific meal groups that areshown in Table 2.1, they have been selected by reviewing recipe databases fromchefs and retailers. The meal groups are constantly under consideration and arerepresentative of the UK trends in meal popularity (Defra 2014). The selection ofmeal groups is strengthened by this study undertaking semi-structured interviews ofnine practitioners in the food industry working with food trends and product

14 W. Martindale

Tab

le2.1

The

descriptionof

themealg

roup

sused

totestthe6fmin

thisstud

yconsiderstheEsupp

lyandEprep

functio

nstogether

with

theenergy

embo

died

inpo

tentialdo

mestic

food

wastes

Meal

grou

pPrinciple

ingredients

Prop

ortio

nof

typicaling

redient

grou

ps(%

ofmealweigh

tin

brackets)a

Energy

consum

edsupp

lychain

Energy

consum

eddo

mestic

preparation

Energy

embo

died

indo

mestic

wastes

Notes

Fish

and

seafoo

dFish

Interm

ediate

Low

Low

Filletandhigh

quality

meatmay

beused,thereisvariability

Pasta

Cereals,

Egg

sCereal7

0,egg5,vegetables

20,

meat20

Low

Low

Interm

ediate

Optionalprocessedmeatcanbe

used,

potentially

redu

ceproteinif

vegetables

areused

Curries,

mince

and

stew

s

Meat,

Pulses,

Spices

Vegetables40–60

,rice

20,

meat40

–60

High

Interm

ediate

Low

Optionalprocessedmeatcanbe

used,

potentially

redu

ceproteinif

vegetables

areused

Salads

and

fruit

Leaf,

Pulses,

Fruit,Egg

s

Vegetables50–90

,egg20

,oil

10Low

Low

High

Optionalprocessedmeatcanbe

used,

potentially

redu

ceproteinif

vegetables

areused

Roasts

Meat,Veg

Meat20

–30

,vegetables

60–70

High

High

Interm

ediate

Filletandhigh

quality

meatmay

beused,thereisvariability

Breakfasts

andbakery

Cereal,

Dairy,

Sugar,

Egg

s

Cereal40

–60

,sugar25

,egg5,

fat20

,dairy5–20

,fruit5–20

Interm

ediate

Low

High

Flexible

preparationisbu

iltinto

this

mealdesign

a Propo

rtions

have

been

derivedfrom

recipesrepo

rted

inMartin

dale

etal.(200

8)

2 Cutting Through the Challenge of Improving … 15

development. The practitioners included three development chefs, three foodmanufacturers and three retailers. The development chefs were independent spe-cialists who regularly develop meals for restaurants and develop food solutions forfood manufacturers that are from the Small Medium Enterprise (SME less than 250employees) to large company (international and pan-European) scales. The foodmanufacturers were SME’s with 50–100 employees and included a bakery, a readymeal provider; and, a confection and snack supplier. The retailers were regional orlocal retailers who had at least 20 employees in the specific retail-outlet identifiedand included two general retail grocery outlets and a farm shop specialising in localfood. The focus of this sample was regional because the goal of the 6fm is SMEaccessibility to sustainability assessment and it is well established that largemultinational companies have robust sustainability reporting measures in place forinternal and external affairs.

The Google Trends web-crawler tool has added rigor to the six functions used bythe 6fm because it has provided a search system that can rank specificconsumer-used terms associated with each of the functions. The use of theweb-crawler enables benchmarking and testing of the responses from the ninepractitioners. The most popular terms selected are shown in Table 2.2, they arethose terms that have greatest citation volume from Google searches and they areused to guide the selection of the six functions and guide the benchmarking for eachmeal identified in Table 2.1.

The benchmarking analysis of 6fm is carried out by asking end-users of 6fm torelate their understanding of the six functions to a scale ranging from 0 to 9 points(a rank of 1–10). In taking the test a participant is asked to mark on a scale of 0–9the score for each function. This is guided by the ‘technical’ or LCA derivedattributes and the ‘values’ or Google Trends attributes described in thismethodology.

Using the meal groups identified in Table 2.1, and descriptors of each of the sixfunctions in Table 2.2, we can begin to develop an index that effectively sums thefunctions by scoring them. The scoring is influenced by product type and thesecurity and sustainability criteria associated with each function to infer ethicaloutcomes by users and the choice of meal. The testing of the 6fm here used six mealgroups obtained by interviewing nine practitioners involved with developing mealdesign strategies. The sample meal groups selected are as follows.

1. Pasta dishes. The pasta trend is still relevant in providing the basis for theMediterranean diet (Kearney 2010).

2. Salad dishes. The salad meal has changed dramatically in the United Kingdomand it still provides an important health driven trends in diets (Leslie et al.2014).

3. Mince, stews and curry dishes. These represent those that are convenient andflexible in that the meals can be both vegetable and meat focussed (Scarboroughet al. 2014).

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4. Roasts. The roast meal is the celebration meal in the United Kingdom, the mealwill typically have a meat ingredient as the centre-of-the-plate and the prepa-ration and cooking processes provide an important test for the 6fm.

5. Fish and seafood. These meal trends are also driven by health issues and areincluded here because they do present specific sustainability issues.

6. Breakfast and bakery. The breakfast and snacking trend is dominant in recentyears and it is an important test group for the 6fm because of this (Hoyland et al.2012).

Table 2.2 The selection of keywords used to support the assessment of the functions in the 6fm,these keywords are used for the micronutrient function in this study

Function Key words identified by Google Trends

Import and exportvolumes

Food trade, coffee trade are used as keywordsThese were filtered from a group that also included the keywordsimported fruit, imported vegetables, imported meat, exported fruit,exported vegetables, exported meat; fruit trade, vegetable trade,meat trade, soy trade, corn trade, cereal trade, sugar trade, bananatrade

Nitrogen used inproduction

Intensive agriculture, organic food are used as keywordsThese were filtered from a group that also included the keywordsnutritional quality, meat and environment, meat and greenhousegas, low greenhouse gas food, sustainable agriculture, fertiliser andfood, (low impact food) was changed to organic food. Greenhousegas references with food provided no trend volume

Protein content of foods Protein and disease, protein and muscle; protein for aging; proteinand the elderly; meat alternatives, meat consumption are used askeywordsThese were filtered from a group that also included the keywordssustainable protein, synthesised protein, waste protein, protein andresearch, protein and capacity, protein and government decisions,protein and global warming/climate change, protein availability,protein and exercise, protein and deficiency, protein and childdevelopment, protein and carbon footprint, protein and eatingdemographics

Micronutrient content offoods

Vitamin C, Vitamin D, essential fatty acid are used as keywordsThese were filtered from a group that also included the keywordsiron nutrition, essential amino acid, folic acid, carotene, biotin,phosphorus nutrition, calcium nutrition, copper nutrition, zincnutrition

Energy used in foodsupply chain

Transport cost and manufacturing cost are used as keywordsThese were filtered from a group that also included the keywordsfuel cost (too general), refrigeration cost, resource efficiency,frozen food, chilled food

Energy used inpreparation of food

Cost of preparation and healthy food are used as keywordsThese were filtered from a group that also included the keywordsenvironmental food, cost of recipes, convenient food (preparation),family food, food for ageing (no trend), food for young

2 Cutting Through the Challenge of Improving … 17

2.5 Benchmarking Meals with the Six Function Model

A summary of the results for the testing of 6fm by the assessment of nine foodindustry specialists is shown in Fig. 2.2, and it can be seen that an index of sus-tainability can be developed using the sum of rank for the six functions. Figure 2.2,shows the highest 6fm scores are for meat containing meal groups and variationbetween meal groups can be relatively small. This means that meal choices overlonger periods of time are likely to only show large differences and the 6fm willconvey this to consumers using it. That is, 6fm needs to be built into lifestyle andused constantly for the impacts of sustainable meals to be realised by consumers.The actual format and design of the 6fm will be decided in future with a range ofclients in manufacturing and retail arenas. Herein lies the challenge to us currently,it is well established that meat products have increased GHG emissions, it is likelythat the differences between different meat and non-meat products will continue tobe identified and discussed but there is a current opportunity to relate these analysesto meal making and diet planning with the 6fm. Figure 2.2, shows the 6fm can beused to inform meal planning within diets across supply chain operations usingconsumer experience as a focus of application.

Fig. 2.2 The 6fm test summary for the meal groups considered in Table 2.1. The scoring wasobtained by analysing the responses of nine specialists that tested the 6fm approach

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A sustainable outcome for every meal is the ultimate goal of the 6fm, with thisbeing coupled to the ‘Triple A’ standard of affordability, assurance and assurancealready being built-into the design of most food ingredients and products it ispossible to achieve the most sustainable outcome. A sustainable meal will bedefined as one that enables consumers to live within limits of available resources sothat they are not destroyed. Assessing and defining this as a practice is what the 6fmguides end-users to do by enabling access to good culinary preparation.

The 6fm can help benchmark high-level sustainability and security issues withthe consumption of meals. An important aim for 6fm is to create change in dietswhere there is sufficient or over supply of protein so that the consumption isbalanced. As such, we considering transitions in protein use or changing proteinpreference in order to reach a sustainable goal rather than limiting protein itself.Typical summaries of the functions include the following.

1. Meal groups containing fish and seafood had the greatest import and export rankwith pasta, and, salad and fruit, meal groups having notably greater ranking thanother meal groups.

2. Meal groups for mince, stews and roasts that typically include livestockingredients have increased ranking for nitrogenous fertiliser use.

3. Meal groups for seafood, pasta and breakfasts show increased micronutrientcontent. The protein content rank of meal groups containing seafood and live-stock products is greater than the other meal groups.

4. The meal groups show relatively constant energy of supply whereas the energyfor preparing stews and roasts is increased compared to other meal groups.

2.6 The FMCG Supply Chain Challenge

While supply chain operations can be simplified, analysis of how supply chainsinteract with consumer choices are complex because of the scale of behaviours inpopulations where there are millions of consumers who exert choice editing,preference and demand pressures. The 6fm approach provides an opportunity forend users to cut through this complexity with individual meal choices they make.This is achieved by identifying universal connectors to assess resource utilisation atall control points of the supply chain and packages these connectors into the sixfunctions of the 6fm. This enables the user of the 6fm to ask structured questionsabout the ingredient and meal choices made for specific meals and relate thisunderstanding to values of security, sustainability and ethics of diets. The sixfunctions we identify to assess the meal groups are well characterised in literatureand we use this evidence to support our reasoning for including them in the 6fm.

Consumer use of the 6fm will also enable feedback into the whole supply chainand Fig. 2.1, shows this feedback being most effective when transferred back to theproducer operators so that it impacts across the whole supply chain. Currently,feedback is more advanced way for the consumer to retailer and manufacturer

2 Cutting Through the Challenge of Improving … 19

operators and this is reflected in Fig. 2.1 (Hutchinson et al. 2015). There are notablesuccesses of feedback where specialist science has complemented cultural interestin preparing food and communicated dietary changes effectively. Such an exampleis the Total Well Being (TWB) Diet from CSIRO in Australia that has used dietarytrials and recipe listing to promote health and sustainability in domestic foodpreparation (Noakes and Clifton 2013).

The use of preservation and preparation practices methods will be critical toensuring nutritional quality and this is a well-established practice for consumers(Hounsome et al. 2008). We must now integrate these understandings with theexcellent body of GHG emission, water-use and energy use studies that haveestablished data initiated by Nielsen et al. (2003), Wallén et al. (2004) andstrengthened by the meta-analysis published by Tilman and Clark (2014). Theenergy used to supply meals in the test of the 6fm here is relatively constant becauseit relates to supply chain resource efficiency where sites of processing and manu-facture can optimise resource utilisation. The energy used in food preparation byconsumers is highly variable because energy used in preparing meals is rarelymeasured and managed in the same way as in manufacturing or service environ-ments. This emphasises the requirement to stimulate the use of sustainabilityassessment in situ, when meals are actually being prepared whether the users areproducers, manufacturers, retailers or consumers.

While food waste is not one of the six functions in the 6fm, it is universallyconnected to each of them through resource use and an important consideration hereis the waste of food by consumers. Consumers’ waste food because

• we have too much,• we do not like,• we have forgotten about it while it has been stored.

The 6fm was developed to capture this information so that meals can be designedefficiently for preservation or portion control. A food waste model that utilisespreparation data has been developed and the data supporting this model is reportedby Martindale (2014b). It considers the use of frozen and fresh foods and shows theuse of frozen foods results in less domestic food waste. This study highlights theimportance of understanding how meals are prepared because much of the foodwaste debate has tended to overlook the importance of preparation and preservationin tackling food waste and focus on the problem of food waste rather than thesolutions to it. Our future efforts on applying the 6fm will be in the consumer useenvironment because ultimately this is where the 6fm will change food preparationand storage practices that in turn will have positive impacts on security andsustainability.

An important consideration in applying the 6fm is the relationship it has withother methods of assessing sustainability practice for preparing meals. The domi-nant methods in this arena are LCA’s and these are not necessarily the mostpractical for informal use because they require in-depth analysis of data quality andprocesses. However, sustainability criteria associated with foods and meals often

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requires us to consider attributes that are not measured by LCA methods, theseinclude food waste, transportation, purchasing frequency, preservation method andso on. The 6fm provides flexibility to include these attributes and provide a broadmeasure of sustainability through the sum of the six functions as an index. Thesustainability assess arena has established standards such as the Carbon Label andcertifications for many different products that develop communication and trans-parency for the sustainability of the supply chain. The 6fm is primarily concernedwith the use of food by consumers even though the data obtained can be utilised bymanufacturers and retailers; and this differentiates the 6fm from LCA which isdesigned to be specific. It is important for us to consider how we might linksuccessful brand communication techniques to sustainability communications andthe household management of food groups that we consume. The development ofsuch systems that utilise meal groups is already well established with nutritionalprofiling tools that have been successful at linking food product development withconsumer driven nutritional outcomes and meal design (Vlassopoulos et al. 2016).The 6fm aims to utilise these types of techniques used by nutrient profiling to groupmeals, but to extend this thinking to a sustainability theme. In maintaining theflexibility and reducing the requirement for detailed investigation in the 6fm it alsoexposes the weakness of the 6fm; that is, the data output will be variable anddependent of the intrinsic knowledge the end-user holds. This caveat in the use of6fm also provides a need to introduce learning and self-assessment feedbacktechniques which are the subject of future development of the model.

The 6fm approach does relate more closely to the broader established certifi-cations of the food industry in that it has to remain flexible and informal so that itcan be used by many different end-users. This approach has been used in generalFMCG arenas with the Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) principlesthat are used internationally (Lifefstyle of Health and Sustainability 2016). Theyprovide a focus on the health of consumers and food consumption using attributesof freshness and dietary standards, as well as sustainability actions that includereaching lower or zero-waste goals. The LOHAS movement has been focussed onthe USA marketplace where some 13% of citizens are considered LOHAS con-sumers, if we consider the European consumer, some 15% fit into the aiming forLOHAS. Indeed, the scorecard approaches used by LOHAS are incorporated intothe 6fm because the scorecard method provides flexibility of use and reduces therequirement for in-depth investigation (Crawford and Scaletta 2006). The LOHASplatform partners with trade organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations(NGOs) so that the actions delivered achieve purchasing awareness across supplychains. The 6fm differentiates its approach here because it is focussed on how foodsare utilised when they are delivered to consumers from the supply chain, this is aparticularly important difference because it is consumer focussed and it is notassociated with the goal of certification.

The 6fm moves us towards an important point in the development of sustain-ability of food FMCG which is to enable consumers to demonstrate what a sus-tainable meal is using the 6fm methodology. The 6fm can be used universally acrossfood and meal groups by all supply chain operators and there is a focus on

2 Cutting Through the Challenge of Improving … 21

consumers when they are considering how to make meals. In conclusion, our goal isto stimulate a transition from ‘LCA-thinking’ to one of ‘consumerexperience-thinking’ by 9 billion consumers if we are to develop successful dietaryscenarios for meal design and food consumption. A critical future consideration forthe 6fm approach is to understand how it might be delivered and promoted acrossfood supply chains. This requires future investigation into how consumers willutilise the 6fm methodology and how the data obtained from consumers will bemost effectively fed-back into the supply chain in order to stimulate the re-design ofsustainable products.

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