Browsing by Author "Wang, Xinfang"

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    Reducing food loss and waste contributes to energy, economic and environmental sustainability
    (Elsevier, 2024-04-09) Gage, Ewan; Wang, Xinfang; Xu, Bing; Foster, Alan; Evans, Judith; Terry, Leon A.; Falagán, Natalia
    Food loss and waste (FLW) reduction presents a major opportunity for enhancing the sustainability and resilience of the food supply chain. However, the lack of evidence regarding the scale and origins of FLW hinder determination of its environmental impact and prioritisation of mitigation action. We herein conducted a study to quantify FLW in the UK horticulture supply chain, and estimate its environmental impact as assessed through CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions. Through a metanalysis of existing literature supplemented with stakeholder engagement, we estimated that 2.4 Mt of fresh produce FLW is generated annually between farm gate and retail for home-grown and imported produce, representing 36% of total supply. FLW was perceived as an inevitable economic risk rather than a sustainability issue, driven by economic factors (e.g. labour shortage, price protectionism). The lack of economic incentives for FLW recovery (e.g. alternative processing) further compound FLW. Our results reveal that FLW contributes 1.7 Mt CO2e annually, constituting 27.2% of the total emissions of the fresh produce supply chain. Resource-intensive production, prolonged storage and complex handling needs generates substantial energy demand and concordant environmental impacts. The current over-reliance on cold chain management should be re-examined to disentangle the FLW-energy-environment nexus, especially given that the effects of global warming on the horticulture supply chain has yet to be examined. To effectively mitigate FLW, a holistic approach is imperative, encompassing policy and consumer-level changes alongside development of novel postharvest management strategies.
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    The role of supply chains for the sustainability transformation of global food systems: a large-scale, systematic review of food cold chains
    (Wiley, 2023-10-13) Trotter, Philipp A.; Becker, Tristan; Renaldi, Renaldi; Wang, Xinfang; Khosla, Radhika; Walther, Grit
    Global food systems need an urgent transformation to be compatible with sustainable development. While much of the recent academic discussion has focused on food production and consumption, food supply chains have received considerably less attention. Here, we conduct a large-scale, systematic literature review of 48,014 academic articles to assess the links between the food cold chain literature and sustainable development. We find a multitude of deep links between food cooling and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but also identify underexplored areas of sustainable food cooling research regarding its (1) goals, (2) analytical depth, and (3) context specificity: There is a limited understanding how several relevant synergies between SDGs can be captured, how to best design sustainable food cold chains across multiple value chain stages, and how to scale sustainable cold chains in low-income and lower-middle-income country contexts. We recommend to explicitly consider the salient interconnections between SDGs, increase the analytical depth by deploying more system-level approaches across entire value chains, and focus on localized solutions in contexts where food supply chains are most underdeveloped.