Water use is an important issue for the agro-industrial sector. Water scarcity could affect the availability of raw materials in the next decades due to the difficulties that farmers could face for irrigating crop. Furthermore innovations in the agro-food sector are often addressed to solve problems from a technological point of view and they do not take into account sustainability of developed solutions. On the other hand, society is seeking a sustainable supply chain able to offer to consumers fresh-products with lower environmental and social burdens. Agro-food companies could use sustainable innovations to enhance their competitiveness, both by optimizing internal processes and by valorising the power of communication sustainability at a national and international level. In the same way sustainable awareness should be increased among final consumers, in order to address long term policies of the overall agro-food supply chain. The development of ready-to-eat agro-food products is affecting the traditional food habits, efforts of agro-food companies go towards technological innovations, manufacturing food that is also a service, but often they miss the huge environmental impacts that these innovations could have. Starting from these assumptions the paper aims to compare the water use of a technological process for obtaining fresh-cut salad and the use of fresh salad in the household. Analysis has focused on salad because of its great amount of water content and the important role that waste, produced in the cleaning and rinsing phases, can play in determining the convenience in terms of sustainability. As for the industrial process, data was directly collected from companies, whilst as far as the domestic water use reasonable data was estimated by consulting scientific writing. Results allow to highlight how an innovation very appreciated by the market, presents criticisms in terms of environmental burdens and how consumer’s behaviour could influence the choices of agro-food industries and could lead them towards a sustainable economy.

Food loss implication in water use assessment of a fresh-cut salad

Carlo Russo;Cappelletti Giulio Mario
;
Nicoletti Giuseppe Martino
2018-01-01

Abstract

Water use is an important issue for the agro-industrial sector. Water scarcity could affect the availability of raw materials in the next decades due to the difficulties that farmers could face for irrigating crop. Furthermore innovations in the agro-food sector are often addressed to solve problems from a technological point of view and they do not take into account sustainability of developed solutions. On the other hand, society is seeking a sustainable supply chain able to offer to consumers fresh-products with lower environmental and social burdens. Agro-food companies could use sustainable innovations to enhance their competitiveness, both by optimizing internal processes and by valorising the power of communication sustainability at a national and international level. In the same way sustainable awareness should be increased among final consumers, in order to address long term policies of the overall agro-food supply chain. The development of ready-to-eat agro-food products is affecting the traditional food habits, efforts of agro-food companies go towards technological innovations, manufacturing food that is also a service, but often they miss the huge environmental impacts that these innovations could have. Starting from these assumptions the paper aims to compare the water use of a technological process for obtaining fresh-cut salad and the use of fresh salad in the household. Analysis has focused on salad because of its great amount of water content and the important role that waste, produced in the cleaning and rinsing phases, can play in determining the convenience in terms of sustainability. As for the industrial process, data was directly collected from companies, whilst as far as the domestic water use reasonable data was estimated by consulting scientific writing. Results allow to highlight how an innovation very appreciated by the market, presents criticisms in terms of environmental burdens and how consumer’s behaviour could influence the choices of agro-food industries and could lead them towards a sustainable economy.
2018
978-954-21-0977-8
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11369/373814
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact