Reduction of Food Waste and Donations of Surplus Food in Retail Stores: A Survey Proposal

Efforts against food waste by reducing food surplus and increasing donations for humanitarian purposes are priorities in retail to achieve a sustainable food system from environmental, economic, and social points of view. The UN has adopted the 2030 Agenda with an SDG 12.3 target, which foresees that “by 2030, to halve the global food waste per capita at the retail level… .” The EU has adopted Target 12.3 as part of its transition to a circular economy and reinforced it in the “EU Farm to Fork.” Improving management procedures to reduce food surplus is now recognized as a priority in retail. There are operational and management barriers in finding qualitative and quantitative information. In fact, there is a widespread tendency among retailers not to make the data (quantitative and economic) and their operational/managerial procedures publicly available. In this paper, we aim to define a survey proposal aimed at measuring the degree of importance attributed by corporate management and store managers to the causes, situations, management practices, and critical factors to fight food waste by increasing the donations of surplus food. This is to overcome the barriers to obtaining qualitative improvement in future business strategies.