A Comparative Attributional Life-Cycle Assessment of Food Waste and its' Effect on the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus.

Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) securities are facing challenges ranging from population growth to dwindling resources. These have increased pressure on the already stressed FEW systems. From the review of the literature, the focus has been on the forward loop of the linkages between these three essential resources. The back loop which often exists in the form of waste has received little to no attention in FEW Nexus debates. According to Food and Agriculture Organization (2011), over 1.3 billion tonnes of food produced annually is wasted. In the US it is estimated that about 40% of food produced goes to waste, estimated to be a loss of about $165 billion in 2010 (Neff et al. 2015).The social, economic and environmental costs associated with food waste are immense and calls for prompt policy intervention. The understanding of how interactions in the backward loop feed back into the system is of importance to replenishing the strained nexus, as well as knowing how food waste affects the nexus. To measure these costs, this study used Life cycle Assessment and focuses on the following indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, energy consumption and economic impacts of food waste under three scenarios.A comparative attributional life cycle analysis shows the impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, energy cost, and water use for a functional unit of 1 million metric tons of food waste under three different scenarios: Business As Usual (BAU), a reduction of food waste and thereby food production by 50%, and waste management of 100% of food waste to anaerobic digestion for energy production. Impacts from cradle-grave are based on United States data collected from several sources, EOL impacts and grave-cradle are calculated through the WARM model. Findings indicate that the largest reduction of strain on the system occurs with scenario 2 of 50% reduction of food produced that is wasted. However, scenario 3, waste to energy, shows a promising reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, energy recovery and has a positive impact at EOL by generating over 200 million dollars of energy into the system. It is recommended that policies seek not only to reduce waste and unnecessary food production, but alternative waste management pathways should be explored to maximize synergies at FEW Nexus backloop.