LOWINFOOD: Multi-actor design of low-waste food value chains through the demonstration of innovative solutions to reduce food loss and waste

LOWINFOOD: Progettazione multi-attore di filiere agroalimentari a basso spreco attraverso l’implementazione di soluzioni innovative per ridurre le perdite di cibo

"The Matomatic plate waste tracker, developed by Matomatic AB, a Swedish company, is a technological innovation designed to enhance children's awareness of the food waste issue. It achieves this by engaging with students in school canteens and providing information about the food they discard directly at the point of disposal. This innovation incorporates a scale connected to a tablet computer. The scale is positioned beneath the bin where plate waste is deposited in the eating hall at the school canteen. Whenever something is thrown away by a guest, the mass of t he item is displayed to the individual along with relevant metrics (environmental & economic) illustrating the impact of its waste. In addition, the plate waste tracker enables guests to provide anonymous feedback regarding the reasons behind their food waste, which can be invaluable for canteen staff in their day-to-day operations. This feedback mechanism serves as a valuable tool for understanding the factors contributing to food waste and empowers the staff to make informed decisions and improvements based on this feedback.
The tool also informs guests and staff about the total plate waste per school per day and week which adds educational aspects for the guests.
In the context of LOWINFOOD, the plate waste tracker has been successfully implemented in 10 primary schools in Sweden, 3 schools in Germany, and 5 schools in Austria. The potential for expanding its usage to other markets exists, particularly in canteens where encouraging guests to minimize food waste is a viable option. The effectiveness of the innovation in reducing waste depends on the initial scope for improvement. Establishments that have identified plate waste issues would benefit the most from implementing a plate waste tracker."
 

Reducing food waste is widely recognized as a crucial step towards building a more sustainable food system. In order to reduce waste numerous interventions, such as information campaigns, have been implemented, they often adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, assuming uniformity in the problem faced by all consumers.
This study aims to investigate the distribution of food waste generation among pupils in schools, recognizing that not all students contribute equally to the issue. Utilizing the Matomatic plate waste tracker, data was collected from 16 primary schools across Sweden, totaling 421,015 instances of plate wastage registrations.
The findings of the study reveal that 40% of the pupils in the studied primary school canteens did not waste any food at all. Among those who did waste food, the distribution was highly skewed, with a minority of wasting students (20%) accounting for a majority (60%) of the generated plate waste. Halving the waste generated by the group of high wasters would reduce overall plate waste by 31%While there was slight variation between schools, all kitchens reported similar patterns, with the top 20% of plate waste events contributing significantly to overall waste.
These results underscore that plate waste generation is not a uniform problem among all pupils. Thus, interventions that target all students equally may not be effective, as the majority of the target group have limited potential to reduce waste. Instead, a more promising approach would involve identifying high-waste individuals and designing interventions tailored to this specific group. However, reaching these individuals, who may be resistant to general messages of food waste reduction, poses a significant challenge.

"LEROMA aims to revolutionize the procurement process in the food industry.
Digital, efficient, and simple: this is what today's industry processes should look like. Especially in the B2B (business-to-business) sector, the exchange between external parties should be made less complicated. In the food industry, food manufacturers often spend weeks looking for raw materials for their products that meet the required quality standards, while raw material suppliers search for buyers for their goods.
LEROMA, a startup from Düsseldorf, provides both manufacturers and suppliers with a digital B2B platform with the aim of simplifying the procurement process at the beginning of the value chain. Raw material suppliers can advertise their products on the platform, contributing to a constantly growing global database. This is available to food manufacturers and other industries free of charge and can even be filtered according to product-specific criteria - the platform's unique selling point. In this way, manufacturers can find the ideal raw material with just a few clicks and avoid a time-consuming search.
Manufacturers can also buy and sell raw materials at favourable prices on the Surplus Exchange, a digital marketplace for leftover materials, residual items, and surpluses, to save money and reduce food waste. At the beginning of the value chain, where LEROMA operates, a large proportion of food waste is generated. Reasons for this include the fact that too much or the wrong amount was purchased due to high minimum purchase quantities, that raw materials were supplied with unsuitable technical criteria, or that a customer dropped out at short notice.
If raw materials can no longer be processed in one's own company, it makes sense to offer them to companies in the food industry on the surplus exchange. Buyers save money, avoid long waiting times and bypass high minimum purchase quantities. This allows them to respond flexibly to short-term customer requests or trends.
LEROMA aims to raise awareness of the potential of these raw materials, which can still be used within and outside the food industry, and to encourage various industries to make greater use of raw materials that are already available, thus contributing to a sustainable circular economy."
 

"Accelerating progress towards Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3 in the European Union is a crucial mission, and the European Commission has put forth ambitious efforts to make it happen. LOWINFOOD is a visionary project that spearheads the charge with innovative solutions tailored for: 1) processing & manufacturing and 2) retail & consumption. These technological, social, and organizational innovations hold the key to reducing food waste in different value chains.
LOWINFOOD goes beyond mere aspirations by providing concrete data-driven results: measuring the efficacy of each innovation in food waste reduction is considered crucial to the project. A comprehensive multi-actor approach has been meticulously crafted based on Delegated Decision 2019/1597 of 3rd May 2019. Through a Delphi consultation with scientific partners and in-depth interviews with innovators, we've laid the groundwork for reliable measurement (KPIs, indicators, methods).
Two data collection phases have been foreseen to measure efficacy: the baseline, which offers an invaluable understanding of food waste in selected environments before the application of the innovations; and the monitoring, which collects data during or after the application of the innovative solution. 
Through this meticulous data collection and rigorous analysis, we can confidently showcase the true impact of our efforts in curbing food waste. Our commitment to precision and accuracy ensures that we pave the way towards a future where sustainability and waste reduction go hand in hand."
 

"Among the drivers of food waste, those related to social dynamics are particularly difficult to address since supply chain stakeholders have potentially contrasting goals. This requires mutual understanding and long-lasting collaboration and is very relevant for perishable products like seafood. Thus, in LOWINFOOD, we run a dialogue between stakeholders of the whole Scottish fish supply chain.
Our dialogue has four goals: develop an in-depth overview of waste hotspots; identify policy gaps and opportunities; promote awareness of innovative solutions; and favour their adoption by creating new relations or strengthening existing ones. Our stakeholders can exchange ideas as well as fish products and by-products at risk of becoming waste. We have been engaging with stakeholders dealing with fish for human and non-human consumption: fishermen’s and processors’ associations, primary and secondary processors, retailers, by-products users, policy-makers, and research and innovation institutions.
Due to the high value of seafood products, the supply chain is efficient in allocating them to the most profitable use. Still, some mismatches between economic and environmental goals remain. Waste quantification is poor, and issues such as the offshore disposal of unwanted catch remain very sensitive. Spatial dispersal makes the transportation of by-products towards potential users unprofitable in many instances, even more when users are located overseas. For this reason, the creation of localised clusters of industry and innovators is key.
Successful cooperation requires the building of trust between industry stakeholders across all levels of the value chain, and with researchers and innovators that might be perceived as outsiders, as well as to make the reputational benefits of innovation clear. Small actors should be supported in adapting to change rather than blamed for their possibly unsustainable practices.
Our stakeholder dialogue started in July 2021 and will continue until October 2024. Interested stakeholders can get in touch through our Hutton website: https://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/projects/lowinfood-%E2%80%93-multi-actor-design-low-waste-food-value-supply-chains."
 

Reducing consumers’ food waste requires increased awareness, and better attitudes and behaviour. We know that active involvement in food management tasks is more effective in triggering change compared to passive interventions like information campaigns. Thus, as part of the LOWINFOOD socio-economic evaluation, we assessed if the employees, household members, and high-school students involved in demonstrating our innovations experienced a positive change in their awareness, attitude, intention, and behaviour towards food.

To this end, we collected survey responses before and after the demonstration of 12 innovations of different types: food waste prevention governance, consumer behavioural change, supply chain efficiency, and food redistribution. We know well that questionnaires are not reliable when dealing with food waste. So, we did not ask directly about this challenge but how much our participants agreed with a series of statements. Our study was run in nine EU countries, for a total of more than 500 responses across the two phases! 
Involvement in the LOWINFOOD innovations against food waste increase participants’ moral concern for this societal challenge and their intention to act for addressing it beyond the demonstration context. It also reinforced the relationship between their intention and the actual behaviour. The impact was stronger on women and on people with higher education, while influencing young people, including high-school students, proved more challenging.

Among employees, positive change was driven by innovations dealing with supply chain efficiency (Kitro, FoodTracks, Mitakus) and with food waste prevention governance (our supply chain dialogue), while food redistribution actions seem less effective. Household members also experienced significant positive change thanks to their involvement in the demonstration of CozZo. Interestingly, none of our indicators, for none of the innovation types, experiences a negative change. 

"The supplier-retailer interface is a key hotspot of food waste in the Swedish bakery sector, partly due to the reversed logistic management system applied to a large part of the national bread value chain: “take back agreements” (TBA). This holds the bakeries responsible for forecasting, producing and delivering their products, and also responsible for unsold products from an economic and a waste perspective. As the bread waste is mainly generated in the supermarkets, but currently owned by the bakeries, the retailers have limited mandate and economic incentives to reduce the waste – leading to overproduction and inefficient bread management. By quantifying how much waste is generated at the supplier-retailer interface and simulating the outcome of multiple waste reducing scenarios, we can assess the potential benefits and identify limitations of future waste management options.
Five industry actors, including bakeries, retailers and logistic companies, contributed in stakeholder dialogues through which information was shared about the current and future potentials within the bread supply chain. This was used to quantify the waste of bakery products in Sweden (both savory and sweet) sold under TBA, which will next be simulated alongside the potential benefits of removing the TBA or applying changes to it.
The preliminary results suggest that there was considerable waste reduction potential in innovations such as data sharing and price reduction. This result is valuable for supporting incentives for future waste reduction work, both at bakeries and supermark ets. The outcome of this task can also provide guidance on which waste reduction pathway has the highest potential benefits with respect to source reduction and environmental impact."
 

The LOWINFOOD project tested 14 innovations to tackle food waste in various contexts, aiming to advance them to high Technology Readiness Levels. Eight innovations showed measurable or partial success in reducing FLW, highlighting practical opportunities for improvement and application by practitioners.
Successful examples include the use of smart bins in Germany, Greece, and Switzerland, which helped canteens track and reduce plate waste, and forecasting software for bakeries in Germany, which minimized surplus by improving production planning. A mobile app in Italy enabled restaurants to sell leftover meals directly to consumers, reducing post-consumer waste while offering affordable food options. Similarly, a cooperation system in Austria effectively redistributed fruit and vegetable by-products, preventing losses and adding value to supply chains. An innovation developed in Italy and tested in Romania showed the potential to recover surplus food in agriculture, supporting the implementation of a CAP measure providing economic aid to producers facing losses.
Some challenges emerged, including limited access to production data and organizational reluctance to share information, which hindered the ability to measure the impact of certain innovations. Additionally, some tools relied heavily on user engagement, which affected their overall performance and effectiveness during testing.
Practitioners can benefit from these innovations by reducing operational costs, improving resource management, and contributing to sustainability goals. 

"The innovative educational concept for school canteen staff and pupils helps to avoid food waste in schools. In Austria's catering sector, there is often a lack of awareness and sensitisation to the issue of food waste. Food is wasted in Austrian canteens from purchasing, over preparation and serving, to consumption. In order to build the necessary knowledge and put it directly into practice, these subjects were introduced and discussed in workshops with the employees of the school canteens and pupils, and then put into practice in the common preparation of meals.
The overall goal was to identify avoidable food waste in preparation, serving, and consumption through the innovative educational concept and to reduce it in the long term. In addition to raising awareness, target group-specific practical measures are presented and positive incentives to become active are developed. A Michelin-star chef demonstrated the correct handling of food during preparation to strike up a discussion around food waste prevention practices in canteens. The common challenge in the workshop is to cook as many portions as possible from one shopping basket while producing a minimum amount of waste.
In order to test the impact of the educational concept, it will be carried out at up to 12 schools in Austria. The aim of this part of the project is to answer some questions about the potential to reduce food waste in canteens, save costs and create awareness. The concept will be used as a validated method and valuable tool for canteens and restaurants."
 

"""The crooked cucumber"" is one of the better-known examples of food that is not very marketable. Fruit and vegetables may not end up on the usual consumer shelves for a variety of reasons: produce that measures a few grams or millimetres too much or too little, produce with damaged peel or skin. Pretty or not, these foods are still perfectly edible and valuable. Finding suitable buyers for them, however, often comes up against logistical and economic lim its.
The company ""Unverschwendet GmbH"" (UNV) from Vienna (Austria) has developed a business concept to close the gap between supplier and buyer of surplus food. UNV exclusively buys surplus food, i.e. food that cannot be marketed or is produced in excess for various reasons (e.g. due to overproduction, due to errors in the ordering system). They created acceptance criteria that need to be stated by the supplier, e.g. reasons for surplus food as well as information on allergens and hygienic requirements. Suppliers also have to sign a contr act that the surplus is sold for less than the current market value. This is important to prevent incentives for further surplus production. Furthermore, they have classified surplus food into
different grades to support price negotiations negotiations.
Generating trust and willingness to cooperate are essential in this business segment and these are the key competences of UNV. Farmers, wholesalers, deep-freeze warehouse are suitable partners on the supply side. Direct distribution to food service and ret ail sector is not feasible on the demand side due to inefficiency (high time efforts) or too strict requirements (from retailers). Instead, large companies were acquired and supplied with fresh or semi-finished products from surplus food. UNV has continuously managed to create a sustainable network between supply and demand of surplus food and increase increased the distributed amount of surplus food per transaction from a few tons in 2021 to between 10 and 30 tons in 2022."
 

Researchers and innovators of the LOWINFOOD project identified a toolbox addressed to policy makers, and more in general to stakeholders of food supply chains, containing 6 strategies to support the diffusion of innovations that prevent and reduce food loss and waste (FLW). Each strategy meets a need related to a barrier, is relevant for a specific phase of the value chain and should be implemented at a specific governance territorial scale. The 6 identified strategies to reduce Food Loss and Waste (FLW) are the following:
To overcome the lack of network among stakeholders:
1.    Strengthen trade associations and producer organizations (to be implemented at regional level). Within this kind of cooperation members can share knowledge and establish efficient production standards. 
2.    Supporting networks of cooperation among innovators (to be implemented at national level), so that they can share information and data.
To overcome the lack of motivation of entrepreneurs:
3.    Providing incentives for companies that reduce FLW (f.i. waste tax reduction). 
4.    Introducing regulations that force companies to reduce FLW (f.i. penalty fee). 
    (to be implemented at national level)
To overcome the lack of motivation of citizens:
5.    To carry out public awareness raising and information campaigns targeted to citizens (f.i. pilot programs in school canteens). 
(to be implemented at EU, national and regional level)
To overcome the lack of data in order to use the technology behind the innovations:
6.    introducing regulations that force food companies to record data about FLW. 
    (to be implemented at EU level)
How did we end up with these strategies? 
1. Focus group with LOWINFOOD innovators
2. Barriers and solutions for the diffusion of innovations are identified
3. Solutions are merged into wider strategies
4. Strategies are rated by a panel of experts (for impact and feasibility)
5. Strategies are prioritised

"The Mitakus is a forecasting software that is used in the out-of-home sector, such as in business or university canteens, to predict sales, i.e., the number of guests buying meals. Mitakus helps food service businesses to improve their planning and forecasting by producing the right amount of food and lowering food waste in the process.
The food service businesses provide Mitakus with historical sales data of their different menu lines. Mitakus then cleans the data and uses AI to identify patterns. Variables such as the season, weather, menu line, and day of the week are taken into consideration. Based on the algorithms derived by Mitakus, forecasts for sales are made. This enables decision makers to better adjust the production volume to the actual demand.
The forecast provided by Mitakus can be accessed online and can be used as a planning tool. Chefs and supervisors can compare tool predictions for specific meals and even ingredients, to their own planning planning. Usually, users work on a weekly basis with the tool, viewing the forecast and making adjustments if necessary. These can involve changing the purchase volume or making short-term adjustments to cooking volumes on a specific day. If the purchase volume can be reduced due to more accurate planning, food cost may be lowered.
While an innovation can save a company money by producing just the right amount of food and wasting less, Mitakus may also reduce stress. With a reliable forecast, the decision of whether the food will suffice for everyone or if more should be produced (and possibly wasted) becomes easier.
In the LOWINFOOD project, we test and evaluate Mitakus in two university canteens and two business canteens. We expect that Mitakus will reduce food waste, because the volume of food needed can be predicted better. We are still testing the innovation right now."
 

"The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has developed an innovative forecasting software aimed at reducing food waste, particularly in the fresh fruits and vegetables sector. This software utilizes cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to achieve its goals. By analysing sales data from three Italian stores, which have accumulated years of data specifically from the fresh produce department, the software generates models that focus on daily sales forecasts for a specific set of crucial products identified by the stores.
The algorithm powering the forecasting software considers various factors to make accurate predictions. It considers the previous 30 days of sales data, as well as the day of the month, month of the year, and day of the week. Additionally, it factors in in formation about holidays, pricing, and promotional periods to predict the quantities of each product that will be sold. To evaluate the accuracy of the model, forecasts have been generated for an entire year and compared against the actual sales data recor ded on corresponding days.
The performance of this model represents a significant improvement over current practices, demonstrating an approximate 50% enhancement in the accuracy of the forecasts.
The next step involves integrating the software into the retail stores and conducting tests to assess its effectiveness in real-world settings, to evaluate how the availability of more accurate sales forecasts can reduce the frequency and extent of food waste at retail stores."
 

"What gets measured, gets managed. This famous quote also applies to the fight against food loss and waste (FLW).
Measuring the amounts of FLW, and their impact, is crucial to understand which initiatives and innovations can really help. For example, innovations that process FLW into bio-based materials can be beneficial because of the reduction in waste but may not make sense from an environmental perspective because of the additional energy/resource input required. Or they can generate new income and jobs in the bio-based packaging industry at the expenses of the waste management industry, which requires a calculation of the net gain. Also, a holistic approach is necessary to avoid shifting FLW from one sector to another. For a future implementation of promising innovations, an appropriate evaluation is therefore essential.
Measuring food waste requires the involvement of the people who work every day in food companies, restaurants, catering etc. Hence, LOWINFOOD researchers apply a multi-actor approach to involve different actors of the food supply chain. In this collaboration, researchers look at robustness of methods for the evaluation, practitioners contribute with making these methods feasible in real life. This can be challenging, but also beneficial when used for selected aspects. The evaluation of innovations to prevent and reduce FLW is conducted for the efficacy as well as the environmental, social, and economic impacts. Two systems are compared:
• Conventional food supply chain (baseline); the system before implementation of innovation and
• Low-waste food supply chain (monitoring); the system after the implementation of innovation
The main challenge is finding the most robust but at the same time most feasible data collection method. The experience within LOWINFOOD showed that partners can judge quite well, which method can successfully be applied. This decreases the risk of failures and increases the quality of data."
 

Food waste has a big impact on the environment, mainly because of the emissions from producing food. If we can prevent food waste or redistribute surplus food, the whole food supply chain becomes more efficient. This leads to big savings in emissions and environmental costs. The environmental benefits of these actions are much greater than the effort it takes to implement them.
Producing food uses a lot of resources like fuel, land, water and raw materials, which harms the environment and costs a lot. For example, farming cattle releases methane, and using fertilizers releases nitrous oxides, both of which contribute to climate change. Emissions from transporting, storing, and cooking food also add to the problem. If we wasted less food, we could cut down on these harmful emissions. 
The best way to help the environment is to prevent food waste in the first place. This is especially true for animal-based products, which have a big impact on climate change, and citrus products or almonds, which use a lot of water during production. If we can't prevent food waste, the next best thing is to redistribute or donate it so people can eat it. Recycling comes after that. The last resort should always be sending food to the landfill.
Measures to reduce food waste are for example better forecasting with the help of a software or turning surplus food into products like bread crumbs or vegetable chutneys. Those efforts, such as the energy used for the computer to run the software or to cook the chutney, have a small environmental impact. The environmental benefits from preventing food waste are much bigger. Therefore, these actions can save resources and cut emissions.

The aim of socioeconomic impact evaluation is to assess the value created by individual innovations and by the overall project for different stakeholder groups such as the organizations demonstrating the innovations, the individuals taking part in the demonstrations, non-research partners of the LOWINFOOD consortium, and the wider society. The socio-economic impact assessment framework was developed as a resource for future innovation action projects as prospective users and applied for conducting the evaluation in the LOWINFOOD project.  
The purpose and design of innovations matters when considering and comparing their socio-economic outcomes. The generic economic indicators included in the framework can be captured best for technological innovations with immediate affects. The innovations were found to improve the food waste related awareness and intentions of those taking part in their demonstration. Most non-research partners of the consortium stated that they had a positive experience from their participation in the LOWINFOOD consortium, and referred to aspects such as network creation, business expansion, and knowledge exchange resulting. The assessment concluded that jobs were created, not through the demonstration of the innovations but through the LOWINFOOD funding provided to innovative start-up partners.
For future analysis, we recommend improving the data sharing agreements with business partners to ensure better disclosure, and automatizing the data collection procedure, as much as possible, to reduce its burden for test locations and improve the quality of the data used in assessment. 

Bread is one of the most wasted food categories in Finland. To innovate new ways for reducing bread waste in the bread value chain, relevant stakeholders were invited to join a stakeholder dialogue. Bakeries, retailers, and the Finnish Bakery Federation participated either in a series of online workshops or interviews where current challenges were identified and current and possible future actions to prevent bread waste and surplus were discussed. As a result of this stakeholder dialogue, a joint roadmap for reducing bread waste was developed.
The roadmap for bread waste reduction in Finland includes 15 action points in total, divided between actions directed mostly at bakeries, retailers, and other stakeholders. 
The suggested actions for bakeries highlight the importance of bread loss and waste analytics to direct strategic and operational activities, developing a zero-waste culture, sharing knowledge, integrating bread waste reduction into product development, reducing assortment, and communicating about bread waste to consumers. The actions for retailers focus on placing orders earlier and developing forecasting methods, mutual sharing of information with bakeries, and managing assortment and empty shelves. The actions for other stakeholders include, among others, developing new solutions to address bread surplus redistribution and re-use, developing bread packaging, and easing on legislation related to food labelling for products that re-use materials.
This stakeholder dialogue was organized as part of the Work Package (WP) 3 in the LOWINFOOD project, and it aims to analyze innovations against loss of bakery products. Besides Finland, the same activities have been conducted in Italy and Sweden. 

Data collection for the socio-economic evaluation of LOWINFOOD innovations was challenging. As a result, the representative sample was small in several cases and the gender analysis was carried out by 4 categories of innovations rather than for each innovation. Data was collected through participant surveys distributed to employees of the companies, students in the schools, and members of the households implementing the innovations.  

532 people took part in the surveys and there were more women than men (337 women, 63.3% and 173 men, 32.5%). In general, all were satisfied with the implementation of the innovations. However, women in particular felt slightly more satisfied and confident after the demonstration of the innovations. In the category of food waste prevention governance, considered as social innovations, there were more male participants, but women reported higher satisfaction. In the consumer behavior change category, employees (mainly teachers), the majority were women and both sexes reported positive satisfaction. Among household members, participation was balanced between women and men, and in general both sexes were very satisfied with the implementation of the innovations. For students, with a high prevalence of female respondents, the satisfaction rate was positive. In the supply chain efficiency category, which are mainly considered as technological innovations, the satisfaction of women increased while that of men decreased. Finally, in the food redistribution actions´ category, considered as organisational innovations, the participation was balanced and both women and men were satisfied.

During peak production periods for fruits and vegetables, market prices may fall below levels that make it unprofitable for farmers to harvest the crops. To avoid this, the EU has implemented a system to withdraw these products from the market. The EU compensates the farms through the POs for the quantities of fresh fruit and vegetables withdrawn from the market and intended for free for human consumption (the most desirable destination) or "other destinations" (biodigester, animal feed, composting, etc.). 
The S.I.R. platform is an online IT tool created for the management of "Withdrawals of fruit and vegetables from the Market" (Reg (EU) 1308/2013) and to facilitate contacts and collaboration between producer organizations (POs) which have to donate these fruit and vegetables and charitable organizations and institutions which receive them for free (as provided of EU Reg 2017/891).
The platform has numerous advantages compared to paper-based management such as, complete dematerialization of all documents, a higher transparency in all phases of the process, an enhancement of charitable distribution of the products (or other secondary uses) compared to the destruction of the product, as it makes the product available in the shortest possible time to all the charities/beneficiaries potentially eligible to receive the product.
Thanks to the LOWINFOOD project, an attempt was made to "export" the SIR platform to Romania, where a demonstration was conducted. A complete simulation of the SIR adoption in Romania has been created, except for the (real) refunding of farmers. The stakeholders (the farmers and the charity with the support of the University of Pitesty as a mediator) monitored their monthly food donation in 2023-2024, to test the platform in their context. 
 

Where are the problems and how can they be solved?
A significant proportion of the fish that ends up in the nets does not find its way onto our plates. Although the figures for how high this proportion should be estimated vary considerably in the scientific literature, according to some estimates every second fish caught is not ultimately consumed by humans. There are no current and exact figures on what proportion of fish is lost in the German market for human consumption. 

In the LOWINFOOD project, we did not aim to collect more precise data for the fish value chain in Germany. Rather, we wanted to talk to stakeholders, and bring these people, companies and organizations into conversation with each other - from fishing to processing and refinement, wholesale and logistics to retail and catering; participants from science as well as civil society and government institutions also took part. The goal was to better understand where the losses are particularly high and which strategies and measures could lead to an improvement in the situation. 

The stakeholder dialogue was conducted as two formats: 1. Interviews in which experts presented their views on problems and possible solutions in the field of fish in detail. And 2. Workshops in which the interviewees and other experts were able to discuss with each other. The participants of the stakeholder workshop emphasise that relatively small amounts of waste are generated in the steps of the value chain that is important for Germany (especially processing, transport, wholesale and retail trade and catering). This is mainly justified by increased fish prices, meaning no company has an interest in unnecessary losses. If losses do occur, this is often due to the lack of (skilled) workers. This shortage should be combated through more attractive working conditions and policy measures. In the upstream and downstream stages of the value chain (upstream: fishing, mostly by foreign fleets and often in developing countries; downstream: consumption in private households) large amounts of waste are generated. It is up to companies and politics to influence these stages, for example through better coordination with fisheries in the Global South and support for the introduction of sustainability labels such as MSC; and also through better nutrition education that enables people to use the valuable resource of fish appropriately and as completely as possible.