Follow-up measures for social change and the environmental goals

Swedish industry should strategically work towards improved energy and resource efficiency. In this context, decision making and key performance indicators (KPIs) play a central role in achieving improved efficiency. Even for regulation authorities, fair KPIs of energy end-use are very important to be able to perform excellent, preventive and proactive work towards Swedish companies. KPIs at international and national levels are based on energy supplied, normally related to an economic output, such as value added. However, there are no key figures about the energy end-use in Swedish industry, distributed on energy carriers such as electricity and oil, and in turn allocated on energy end-using processes such as furnaces, air compressors, etc. The existing figures regarding this are based on rough estimates. The goal of the project has therefore been to generate a process tree for several of the largest, energy end-using Swedish manufacturing industries, as regards how energy end-use is distributed at the process level and for different energy carriers, and in turn allocate greenhouse gas emissions for these different processes. The results indicate that energy KPIs based on energy use and indirect carbon greenhouse gas emissions at process level can contribute to better knowledge of the industrial energy end-use processes that have the greatest potential for energy efficiency improvements as well as greenhouse gas abatement. In order to continuously know the processes with the greatest potential for improvement, energy end-use data should be collected regularly and follow a standardized categorization of energy end-use processes. The project has been limited to Swedish industry, but the results can be useful for other EU member states as well as globally.

Patrik Thollander, Linköping University

The purpose of this project was to increase the understanding of how changes in society come about and affect national environmental quality objectives. The study focuses on changes that have taken place in the food retail sector in Sweden over the past decade, given the increasing interest and focus on food waste/food loss as an important environmental issue. During this time, the issue of food waste has gone from a “non-issue” to an issue in the spotlight, both in society at large and in the food retail sector. But how can the question of food waste/food loss in supermarkets go from being unknown and invisible to becoming a visible issue in the media and one which authority and the food industry are working actively to tackle in just a decade? Which factors and actors made this change possible? What has changed the focus in terms of practices and waste generation levels?

Qualitative and quantitative methods were combined to fulfill the overall purpose of the study and to answer the research questions of the project. In the qualitative part of the study, an interview study and a media study were performed: The interview study explored different types of actors’ experiences of what has changed and how changes happened, through interviews with experts and with selected stores. The media study, in turn, examined how large the issue of food waste from stores has been in printed media over time, and how it has been described in different types of press at different times. In the study’s quantitative part, waste data from municipal waste registers was used to validate and measure the influence of the change in focus on food waste, as well as the timing and speed of the change.

The reporting on food waste/food loss by the Swedish media has increased drastically during the studied period, both in sector-specific media and in mass media. In local mass media, the reporting of the term food loss (matsvinn) went from 22 reports in 2008 to 720 in 2017. In general terms, the reporting has evolved from establishing food waste/food loss as a problem and describing it as a waste of resources (based on the publication of data from 2008 to 2010) to framing it as a major environmental and climate problem (2013) with more actors responsible for the problem than just consumers. From 2016 onwards, the issue of food waste/food loss in stores has been posed more as a common problem throughout the value chain, from producer to consumer as well as to authorities and at the political level. The reporting tends to focus on describing the problem and giving examples of good initiatives and solutions. Sector-specific media follow roughly the same thematic development over time but also problematized issues such as responsibility at various stages in the value chain.

The interview study pointed to several important factors and key actors who interacted in different ways to focus on the issue of food waste in Sweden:

• The role of measurement in making the issue visible.
• The formation of an actor network (aka. SaMMa) that could work on resolving the issue together.
• The role of the media as a key player.
• Increased focus on environmental and climate issues in society in general.
• Change of attitudes among consumers and the food retail sector.
• Digitization that has given new tools and working methods.

There was consensus in the interview study on the basic cause of food waste: Food waste is a welfare problem that arises because food is too cheap. The interview study showed the importance of attitudes and practices in the food retail sector on food waste in supermarkets. Many practices in food stores originate from thoughts about how consumers behave and what generates sales. Different store managers seem to make different assessments regarding when the amount of food waste justifies a reduction/change in supply and assortment. The store manager’s attitudes to the issue are crucial for ways to reduce food waste. Purchasing/ordering was a key factor in reducing food waste while legislation and regulations in many cases were an obstacle. Date marking and the rules on information for non-prepacked food were examples of problematic areas.

An interesting fact that is highlighted is that in several cases (especially when it comes to cheap goods such as bread), it is more costly and labor-intensive for stores to sell the goods rather than to simply throw it away. In other cases, waste prevention work is perceived as profitable and it is also something that many stores work on actively to varying degrees. Looking at incentives to strengthen food waste reduction in the retail sector to support waste prevention efforts in stores is an important task for responsible authorities in the future. On the other hand, the interview study showed a tendency to view food waste as less of an issue in cases where it is used as a resource (e.g. biogas, yeast or breadcrumb production). This can reduce incentives to prevent the emergence of food waste in earlier stages.

The interview study highlights the importance of looking at the entire value chain – from producer to consumer – when looking at how food waste can be counteracted. Both store and expert interviews highlighted the importance of the business model structure and how it affects the collaboration and strength of relationships between different actors, which is perhaps the most important thing to work with in the future. Instead, today there is a tendency to try to present the problem mainly as someone else’s problem in another part of the value chain.

The quantitative study showed that in municipalities where waste registers with weight-based tariffs are used, data on the amount of waste generated in stores can be collected, which is also separated into food waste and residual waste. However, it was difficult to obtain data on total amounts of food waste, as there may be food waste included in the residual waste. There were also stores that do not use municipal collection for food waste (and/or residual waste). Municipal waste registers therefore do not provide a total coverage of all stores. In our study the coverage was 14 of 40 stores. This shows how difficult it is to retrieve data and the need for other data sources such as from the stores themselves. 

The amounts of waste in the stores investigated vary widely between months, years, types of waste (residual waste, food waste and recyclables) and total waste. In our data there was no specific trend identified, due to the small size of the dataset and the complexity of food waste flows among many actors, both municipal and private. Rather, there are large variations. This strengthens the conclusion of the qualitative study on the strong influence that store managers have on food waste.

An interesting result from the waste data is that for the four stores that we examined in more detail, the smaller stores generated less waste per square meter of retail space than the larger stores. This is contrary to previous research. The effect of store area by square meter on waste generation can be tested in a larger quantitative study.

The project shows that all stores do not use separate food waste collection, either via the municipality or other private operators, even though it is offered. Ensuring that food waste is disposed of and converted into biogas and/or compost is important and will become mandatory by 2023 according to the revised EU Waste Directive. Here, municipalities and private actors can work harder to get more to use this service.

The role of the media as the catalyst, blowtorch and motivation (using good public relations) can probably not be underestimated in the change of how the food waste issue is viewed and managed – which was also consciously used by the actors who wanted to influence the issue. This approach can probably be copied and transferred to other areas. The importance of data for visualization and advocacy, and collaborative social change in the form of increased environmental focus in society as a lubricant for attention and attitude change is probably also transferable to other issues.

Louise Sörme, Statistics Sweden

The European Commission has adopted the Circular Economy Package to stimulate Europe’s transition towards a circular economy. Through reusing, remanufacturing, and recycling of products and thereby closing the loop of product lifecycles, it will bring our society both environmental and economic benefits fostering a sustainable economic growth.

A three-year research project called LinCS had as aim to understand the conditions needed for a circular model to be sustainable, both at micro as well as macro level (including rebound effects).

After an extensive literature review, ten different case studies were conducted in which the environmental, economic, and circularity performance of a product in a linear and circular business model were quantified. Macro-economic modelling was then performed to assess potential secondary effects and explore the benefit for Sweden when transitioning towards a circular economy. Policy implications following from the project are outlined.

Patricia van Loon, Chalmers Industriteknik