ABSTRACT Food loss and waste (FLW) represent a major environmental and economic issue in fruit and vegetable (F&V) supply chains, as they lead to a large volume of products being discarded and a significant waste of natural resources. Assessing the environmental implications of FLW through a life cycle perspective is crucial to achieving more sustainable agri-food systems. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) enables the identification of environmental hotspots, supports the environmental sustainability of decision-making strategies, and enables the potential benefits from adopting circular practices to be quantified. The objective of the present review is to examine how LCA has been applied to evaluate strategies that reduce or valorise FLW in F&V supply chains. First, the review discusses methodological aspects of LCA, including compliance with ISO 14040 standards, system boundaries, functional units, inventory gathering options, the main impact assessment methods and software used. Second, it details the mitigation strategies reported in the literature and their outcomes, which predominantly focus on postharvest stages. These include practices such as ozonated water treatments, ultrasonic humidification, packaging alternatives, refrigeration improvements, Internet of Things applications, and food redistribution. Third, the review analyses findings on valorisation strategies, including composting, anaerobic digestion, animal feeding, the extraction of value-added compounds, and the development of new food products compared with conventional waste treatments (landfilling and incineration). The main limitations of these works were identified, and the direction for new areas of study is presented.
Rasines et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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