8. Information Gathering

To address the subject in focus, information was gathered through multiple means, including a literature review of scientific research, report analyses, as well as interviews with experts in the field.

We started with a literature review to get an overview of research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The process used was inspired by the PRISMA method, which includes planning, carrying out the review, and reporting the results.

First, we planned the review with a focus on providing the baseline for the search. We defined our goal as follows: to find articles from Nordic countries about ways to prevent food waste. We conducted searches on the Scopus database on 1 February 2024. We chose Scopus as it covers many relevant journals in the area of interest and allows for complex searches. It also allows for searches that include “AND” and “OR” and searches of a variety of spellings/wordings, such as “sustainab”, which would include variants of sustainability, sustainable, and similar words. Using this, we chose keywords for our search, as shown in the search string below, focusing on articles written in English about FWL in a Nordic context:

TITLE-ABS-KEY ( “food waste” AND “Sweden” OR “Norway” OR “Iceland” OR “Finland” OR “Denmark” OR “Faroe Island*” OR “nordic*” ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA , “ENVI” ) OR LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA , “SOCI” ) OR LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA , “BUSI” ) OR LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA , “ECON” ) OR LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA , “ENGI” ) OR LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA , “ENER” ) OR LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA , “PSYC” ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE , “ar” ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( LANGUAGE , “English” ) )

The second stage of the literature review encompassed the actual search and reading of the identified articles. This stage also included a selection process to exclude results deemed irrelevant to the purpose of the literature review. The initial search yielded 200 articles after the removal of duplicates and clearly irrelevant results. The subsequent step in the process involved reviewing the title and abstract of all articles to identify those aligned with the purpose of the literature review. Following this step, 85 articles remained.

The next stage in the process was to conduct a content analysis and present the results. To this end, the introduction, purpose, and conclusions of all the remaining articles were read, after which the full text was perused to identify various measures and classify them according to different stages in the value chain, as shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1 – Studies addressing various stages of the value chain and their county setting

As illustrated in the table above, a majority of the articles were found within the categories of “retail”, “public meals”, and “households”. To strengthen the scientific foundation for the other areas, a qualitative search was conducted in which additional articles deemed to be of interest were included. They were identified through a process known as “snowballing”, wherein the authors’ own insight and understanding of the field were utilised to identify potentially omitted results. Furthermore, additional articles were continuously identified throughout the project’s implementation, for instance, in reports and through interviews, which were subsequently incorporated into the reporting.

In addition to the scientific articles, a review was conducted of a substantial number of reports produced within the field. A search was carried out on the websites of different authorities for various reports concerning food waste in general and preventive measures in particular. These authorities were identified partly by referring to the participants at the Nordic Food Waste Summit in April 2023 and their organisational affiliations and by inquiring as to whether any additional actors should be included in the search. Following this inquiry, several organisations were added, notably interest groups. The initial website search was broad, using the search term “food waste”. All identified reports were initially included, subsequently focusing on reports produced after 2015. Only reports written in English, Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian were selected for further analysis. These were then perused for classification according to type and focus. Additionally, we noted whether the reports contained cases to learn from and whether any effects of the measures had been quantified.

Beyond the initial website search, a considerable number of additional reports were acquired because of discussions during interviews and inquiries to individuals active in the field. This included various types of surveys or reports from interest groups and research collectives.

Based on the reports, a need was identified to pinpoint exemplary cases that illustrated the implemented measures and, where applicable, their effects. The aim was to obtain a distribution of illustrative cases representing different parts of the value chain, demonstrating various types of measures, and a spread across countries. Where possible, cases with verified results were also desirable.

The interviews served multiple purposes: to validate and supplement the reports and written material identified via websites; to gain insight and understanding of the knowledge and comprehension held by the interviewees and their organisations and their reflections on the field; and to identify exemplary cases of preventive measures that had been implemented.

Initially, interviewees were identified by referencing a list of participants from the Nordic Food Waste Summit in April 2023. These primarily included individuals from authorities in the various countries. This was subsequently expanded by identifying key personnel associated with, for example, research institutes or interest organisations in the different countries. The intention was to conduct the interviews primarily with authorities and organisations working with food waste in the various countries, thus complementing the search of reports on the websites of these authorities.

The interviews included questions about the organisations’ work on food waste issues, their food waste efforts in different parts of the chain, challenges and opportunities, as well as perceptions of the effects of various measures. The interviews concluded with an inquiry about other contact persons for either interviews or specific measures. Through this process, additional interviewees were added often from other organisations. This included, among others, interest organisations linked to food waste and researchers who had been involved in practical work in various ways.

In total, 13 individuals were interviewed, eight of whom represented authorities, three were from research institutes or universities, and two were from interest organisations. Following the completed interviews, follow-up questions were sent out based on what had emerged in order to achieve comparability in certain cases where relevant. They were primarily sent to interviewees in applicable cases.