Meet the team: FOOD WASTE

The short post is about one of the research teams in the HES-GEO project. This post gives you a glimpse of the main goals, research questions and methodology of the Food Waste Team.

The Food Waste focuses on the issue of sustainable and resilient food systems. Especially, the team examines local food resources in relation to food producers and consumers and how it overlaps with sustainable development vision.

The main goal is the identification of the potential contribution of food waste mitigation to complement the resilient local food system in the SILESIA-REGION.

What is more, we can say that the main research question of this project is “How to use local (governmental, non-governmental) initiatives food waste mitigation to execute effective and resilient local food system in the SILESIA-REGION?”

WHY?

Food waste is one of the most important challenges in today’s global world. It is important that each of us has knowledge about consumer habits that can dynamize this process. This knowledge will allow us to learn about activities that can reduce the problem of food waste, especially in households. For instance, we can organize our food shopping in a better way, especially in terms of perishable products. The other good example can be the use of mobile applications like “Too Good To Go” or “Foodsi“.

WHERE?

The area of research is SILESIA-REGION, which is the part of southwest Poland with specific economic, social and cultural features. The main feature of this area is the post-industrial character.

WHAT?

The main subject of the team is to identify potential local sources of food waste in reference to mechanisms and methods of recovering and effectively re-distributing unused food in the city. The research team will try to propose a systemic model of the resilient local food system in the SILESIA-REGION.

HOW?

In order to implement the project assumptions, the team is going to use various methodologies. These will mainly be social research methods (quantitative and qualitative methods, e.g. interviews), statistical methods (statistical analyses) and GIS techniques.