Food waste prevention and reduction are some of the important initiatives to improve the environmental sustainability of food systems. The global agenda of the United Nations provides a framework of targets and actions against food waste to which the European Union (EU), within the “Farm to Fork” strategy, aims to contribute. In this context, evaluating the impacts of food prevention measures is of great importance for supporting policies. This LCA analyzes the impact of classic lasagna from cradle to grave, through a generic food case study, prepared by food shops in Bologna (Northern Italy). Four scenarios are simulated, comparing the impacts of some end-of-life alternatives for the management of leftover lasagna (landfilling, composting, and redistribution with the digital application of the circular start-up “Squiseat”) versus the ideal scenario where no leftover lasagna is assumed. The results show that the preparation of classic lasagna generates non-negligible impacts on the analyzed LCA categories due to some of its ingredients, such as Bolognese sauce and Parmigiano Reggiano, and their associated production processes. For this reason, it is important to prevent classic lasagna leftovers from being wasted. The comparison of the four scenarios shows that redistribution is the scenario with the lowest impacts in all the investigated impact categories, including global warming (6.24 kg CO2 eq./kg of lasagna). The impacts are also lower than the ideal scenario due to the assumption of more sustainable means of transport. Normalization of characterized results confirms that Global Warming (GW) is only one of the most relevant impact categories in the life cycle of classic lasagna. The results have practical implications for raising awareness concerning the impacts of food production throughout the whole life cycle and the need for preserving the value of food by avoiding waste. Moreover, this study also shows that a reduction in the impact is a shared outcome that could be achieved by the joint efforts of all the stakeholders involved in the life cycle of food. In this regard, urban centers are confirmed to be important hubs of circular and more sustainable innovation. Finally, the LCA enriches the current research by investigating redistribution through the relationship of the food shop–virtual intermediate–consumer. So far, the prevalent focus of the LCA research allows us to assess the redistribution of collected surplus food from retailers and its delivery to the consumers by means of physical intermediaries and related infrastructures (e.g., food hubs, food banks, and food emporiums).
Ghisellini et al. (Sun,) studied this question.