Food waste, consumer attitudes and behaviour. A survey study in the North-Eastern part of Italy

Reducing the amount of wasted food is a key element in developing a sustainable food system. Large quantities of produced food are discarded and, to a large extent, the waste is avoidable. The wastage of food occurs at all stages of the life cycle of food, starting from harvesting, through manufacturing and distributing and finally consumption, but the largest contribution to food waste occur at home. In the past several studies investigated wasting food amount in Italy. Nevertheless there is a substantial lack in the knowledge of the reasons linked to waste food at households. The aim of this paper is to focus on the consumption food waste to explore reasons of wasting food on family level, which is a significant fraction of total, in order to overcome food wasting behaviour and point out options to design prevention measures. A survey was carried out to identify the main reasons of wasting. The results showed that modern lifestyles influence food waste but at the same time the individual attitudes and opinions about the importance of food wasting may play a not negligible role.