Amount and Causes of Food Waste in Households from Perspective of Consumers – the Case Study of the Czech Republic

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378025%3A_____%2F23%3A00575793" target="_blank" >RIV/68378025:_____/23:00575793 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://www.wasteforum.cz/cisla/WF_3_2023_p48.pdf" target="_blank" >http://www.wasteforum.cz/cisla/WF_3_2023_p48.pdf</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Amount and Causes of Food Waste in Households from Perspective of Consumers – the Case Study of the Czech Republic

Original language description

Food waste occurs throughout the food distribution chain, with households, i.e., consumers, accounting for the largest share of total food waste. Different methods can be used to determine how much food people waste in their households, with widely varying results. Direct measurement methods prove to be the most accurate, but due to their financial, logistical, and time-consuming nature, they are not very common, and therefore questionnaires based on subjective estimates of respondents are very often used. This article presents the results of a study that aimed to quantify the amount of food wasted in Czech households through a more sophisticated questionnaire, to identify the most frequently wasted types of food and to explore why people waste food and, conversely, what motivates them to prevent food waste. The analysis is based on a representative sample of the Czech population (N = 815). The results showed that the average Czech consumer over 15 years old throws away 0.566 kg of food waste per week, which equates to 29.4 kg of food waste per year. Bakery products, ready to eat meals and fresh fruit were the types of food most frequently discarded. Regarding the reasons for wasting food, the main reason was unconsumable leftovers, e.g., scraps and parings, followed by rotten food, forgetting about the food, too much food is cooked, and expired eat-by-dates. On the contrary, the main motive for people not to waste food is clearly saving money.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_SC - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50401 - Sociology

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Waste Forum

ISSN

1804-0195

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

16

Issue of the periodical within the volume

3

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

11

Pages from-to

195-205

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85175180628