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Download fileOptimising industrial food waste management
journal contribution
posted on 19.01.2017, 15:41 by Guillermo Garcia-Garcia, Elliot WoolleyElliot Woolley, Shahin RahimifardShahin RahimifardGlobal levels of food waste are attracting growing concern and require immediate action to mitigate their negative ecological and socio-economic ramifications. In the developed world, of the order of 20-40% of food waste is generated at the manufacturing stage of supply chains and is often managed in non-optimised ways leading to additional environmental impacts. This research
describes a novel decision-support tool to enable food manufacturers to evaluate a range of waste management options and
identify the most sustainable solution. A nine-stage qualitative evaluation tool is used in conjunction with a number of
quantitative parameters to assess industrial food waste, which is then used to generate performance factors that enable the evaluation of economic, environmental and social implications of a range of food-waste management alternatives. The applicability of this process in a software-based decision-support tool is discussed in the context of two industrial case studies.
Funding
This research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) UK through the grant EP/K030957/1.
History
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- Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering