Monitoring food waste in the wholesale and retail sector in Germany 2019: Food retail data

Arbeitspapier

The aim of this report is to map food waste in the retail and wholesale sector in Germany for the year 2019 collected as part of the Dialogue Forum on wholesale and retail trade, with the participating retail companies. In addition, the findings regarding the data basis and data collection process are intended to support the development of an accord by the participants in the Dialogue Forum on Wholesale and Retail (as part of the National Strategy to Reduce Food Waste). In the Dialogue Forum, the participating companies work together to ensure that the sustainable development goal 12.3 (halving global food waste per capita at retail and consumer level) can be achieved. This report documents the current status of the work in the Dialogue Forum with results from the food retail sector; the figures from the food wholesale sector will be added in the next report. The calculations are based on voluntarily provided data on sales losses (markdowns) from 13 food retail and Cash and Carry companies represented by approximately 13,000 points of sale3. The participating companies cover a market share of the total retail trade in Germany of about 35 %4. Markdowns include both food waste and redistributed food, such as food donations or as animal feed, as well as breakage and loss. The data do not distinguish between preventable and non-preventable food losses. In addition, they do not provide information on the actual recovery of food not sold at the retail store, since the data collection serves accounting purposes. The extrapolation of food waste for the German retail food sector is based on a high data quality; with markdown data of partly very large companies and sales figures of the entire sector. In this report, the entire food retail is reported for the first time in Germany (see chapter 4). Food waste in the entire retail sector is projected at around 500 thousand tons for 2019, which represents about 1.5 % of food sales. The food waste identified here is 290 thousand tons in organised food retail and 210 thousand tons in the extended food retail. Due to data gaps, it is currently only possible to distinguish food waste from food redistribution (i.e. food donations) and other utilisation (i.e. animal feed) based on estimates - expert estimate for this report: 30% of losses are donated. In the course of further work, these quantities and the causes of losses must be analysed in order to derive measures for reduction.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Thünen Working Paper ; No. 168a

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Landwirtschaft, Veterinärmedizin ; Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models: Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models ; Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics: Industrial Structure and Structural Change; Industrial Price Indices ; Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology ; Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity
• Thema: Lebensmittelhandel ; Monitoring ; Lebensmittelabfälle ; Lebensmittelverluste ; retail ; wholesale ; food waste ; food loss ; measurement ; monitoring

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Orr, Lia ; Schmidt, Thomas G.
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut
• (wo): Braunschweig
• (wann): 2021

Weitere Informationen

• DOI: doi:10.3220/WP1613555002000
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/231426
• URN: urn:nbn:de:gbv:253-202102-dn063358-6
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ