Norway’s Food Waste Policy Applied to Dubai

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Summary
Stakeholder Analysis
Policy Options
Policy Objectives Analysis
Evaluation Analysis
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Recommendation
References

Introduction

Food waste is an economic and environmental issue that receives ever-increasing attention from the nations of the world during the past decades. As of 2017, the world has discarded more than thirty percent of all food produced (Ministry of Climate and Environment [MoC&A], 2017). Wastage impacts food security for the planet’s growing population negatively and contributes to the emission of greenhouse gases, thus facilitating climate change (MoC&A, 2017). As a result, the issue of food waste attracts acute attention “on international, European as well as national levels” (Lucifero, 2016, p. 283). Different countries develop and employ policies to limit food waste and its economic and environmental effects. Norway’s food waste policy relies on prevention while also paying attention to recycling and, despite some of its flaws, its certain components deserve implementation in the UAE and, in particular, Dubai.

Summary

Norway began applying its first specific efforts to reduce its food waste in the 2010s. In 2013, the country adopted “National Waste Management and Prevention Plan “From Waste to Resources,” which included reducing food waste as one of its goals, but did not articulate it explicitly (Hanssen & Gaiani, 2016). In 2016, Norway began developing its first national food waste policy to reduce the share of edible products thrown away (Hanssen & Gaiani, 2016). The main focus of Norwegian food waste policy is on preventing waste, while there is also attention to recycling through biogas production (Hamilton, Peverill, Müller, & Brattebø, 2015). Apart from that, Norway’s food waste policy employs an educational approach that aims to increase food consciousness and “strengthen environmental knowledge as well as motivate towards pro-environmental behavior” (Skrivervik, 2017, p. 48). Finally, the policy also stresses voluntary agreements with agricultural producers and the food industry to reduce food waste, such as the Industry agreement of 2017.

Stakeholder Analysis

There are several types of stakeholders involved in the policy. One may generally divide them into three groups. These groups are governmental authorities, parties in the food industry, and consumers.

Governmental authorities involved in the policy are mainly the Ministry of Climate and Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries. The policy assigns these stakeholders with the responsibility to create and maintain the system for receiving, storing, and evaluating the information form the industry (MoC&A, 2017). They, however, are not responsible for actually gathering this information, as this responsibility is attributed to the parties in the food industry (MoC&A, 2017). Thus, this group of stakeholders is managed by assigning most of the groundwork to other parties.

The second significant group of stakeholders affected by the policy is the Norwegian food industry represented by companies united into associations. These include the Norwegian Agrarian Association, the Norwegian Fishermen’s Association, the Grocery Suppliers of Norway, Norwegian Farmers and Smallholders Union, National Federation of Service Industries, Norwegian Hospitality Association, and others (MoC&A, 2017). Instead of approaching these stakeholders with strict prohibitive measures, the government adopts a cautious approach and manages then through voluntary agreements, such as the Industry agreement approved in June 2017. The essence of the agreement is the same for food producers, retailers, as they face the same requirements to limit their food waste by identical percentages (MoC&A, 2017). The terms of participation, on the other hand, are quite lenient: for instance, any company or association may leave the deal freely with a month’s written notice (MoC&A, 2017). Hence, the government managed stakeholders in the food industry by adopting a prudent and lenient approach that would not alienate potential participants by harming their business interests.

Another group of stakeholders to manage are Norwegian citizens as food consumers. The government manages this group by developing and implementing educational projects aimed at raising food consciousness among the population (Skrivervik, 2017). As this policy brief will mention below, Norway currently prefers prevention to recycling, meaning that reducing food waste on households through educational campaigns is an essential component of the national policy.

Policy Options

In developing the national food waste policy, Norway, just like any other country, had two available options, with the first being prevention. Food waste occurs on all five stages of food production, namely, primary production both before and after harvest, processing and manufacturing, wholesale, retail and marketing, and, finally, cooking and eating (Hanssen & Gaiani, 2016). Prevention strategy seeks to minimize or outright eliminate waste on all these stages by introducing better cultivating and harvesting techniques, improving processing and manufacturing. As for the consumers, prevention involves sensible approach to that does not go beyond fulfilling one’s needs. Due to its straightforwardness, some decision-makers view waste prevention as the best practice approach (Hamilton et al., 2015). However, Hamilton et al. (2015) criticize the prevention approach for its narrow focus on separate levels of production, distribution, and consumption instead of analyzing these stakeholders as an interconnected system. This lack of system-wide focus may be why the Norwegian government is reluctant to make reduction its only approach (Skrivervik, 2017). Thus, Norwegian national food waste policy supports prevention as an option but does not make it its only choice.

The second available option is food waste recycling. Unlike prevention, which focuses on reducing the overall number of edible products wasted, this approach aims to recycle the waste regardless of its total amount, thus preventing resulting environmental damage. Norwegian government views food waste as a potential feedstock for renewable energy, and, therefore, considers the opportunities offered by recycling as well (Hamilton et al., 2015). The evidence of this consideration is the government’s financing of biogas infrastructure – mainly, biogas plants and pipelines –through state funding as well as the economic incentives offered for biogas production (Hamilton et al., 2015). A fitting example of this financing in action is the Magic Factory project and, specifically, its recycling biogas plant in Tonsberg, Norway (Skrivervik, 2017). Norway’s adherence to being a low-carbon society means that developing biogas energy coincides with the government’s broader environmental goals (Hamilton et al., 2015). As a consequence of this and, possibly, other factors, Norway continues to entertain recycling as an option, even though its national food waste policy currently focuses on prevention to a higher degree.

Policy Objectives Analysis

The policy objective, as outlined in the 2017 Industry agreement, is reducing food waste nationwide. The ultimate goal is food waste reduction of q5 percent by 2020, 30 percent by 2025, and 50 percent by 2030, in line with the UN sustainability goal 12.3 (MoC&A, 2017). The reference value to calculate the desired reduction is the level of food waste in 2015, which was 355,000 tons countrywide and 68,7 kg per capita (MoC&A, 2017). The inputs are organizational and financial resources of both the authorities and the participating companies dedicated to gathering, evaluating, and analyzing information regarding food waste in Norway (MoC&A, 2017). The desired output is the generation of data allowing to develop new decision reducing food waste to 50 percent calculated in kilograms per capita (MoC&A, 2017). The projected outcome is a 50 percent reduction in food waste calculated in kilograms per capita (MoC&A, 2017). Finally, the intended lasting impact of the policy is the minimization of food waste on all levels (MoC&A, 2017). Thus, the policy objectives are entirely in line with the adopted prevention approach.

Evaluation Analysis

Evaluation of the policy currently seems flawed, as thee virtually no indication of how it should be conducted. The policy states that the coordination group “will evaluate the agreement after delivery of the main reports for the years 2020, 2025 and 2030,” but does not go further than that (MoC&A, 2017, p. 4). There is no mention of how the participating parties should structure the data, nor explanation of the evaluation mechanisms. Apart from that, the evaluation will likely suffer from the fact that participation is purely voluntary, and any company or association may withdraw at any given moment for any reason (MoC&A, 2017). Considering this, one may agree with Skrivervik (2017) that Norwegian national food policy currently suffers “from high enthusiasm and poor planning” (p. 38). A suitable approach would be to evaluate and calculate the waste occurring in each branch of the industry ion each level from pre-harvest to consumption, but the policy does not elaborate on that.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Many costs associated with the policy are those involved in gathering, storing, and analyzing the information, but there are also costs of educational campaigns and the government financing of the biogas production. The Industry agreement emphasizes that each of the parties “are to bear the costs of their own efforts” (MoC&A, 2017, p. 4). For the food industry, the main costs involve surveying “the extent and composition of food waste” to compile comprehensive statistics (MoC&A, 2017, p. 3). They are also responsible for implementing new approaches “that contribute towards achieving the objectives of the agreement” (MoC&A, 2017, p. 3). The government’s responsibility is creating and maintaining the system for receiving, storing, and evaluating the information form the industry (MoC&A, 2017). Additionally, the government continues to fund the biogas infrastructure (Hamilton et al., 2015). Authorities also bear the costs of “influencing consumers to waste less food” by raising their food consciousness through educational programs (MoC&A, 2017, p. 3). Thus, the policy puts many of the costs on the parties in the food industry, which is a likely reason why the agreement is strictly voluntary with the possibility of a free withdrawal.

However, the companies are also the primary recipients of the potential financial benefits of the policy, as it would allow them to utilize and, therefore, gain income from the products that would otherwise become waste. A fitting example is Norwegian dairy producer Q-Meieriene that set forth a goal to reduce its waste rate from 1.8 to 1 percent (Skrivervik, 2017). The company proved able to reach and even supersede the intended objective and reduce its waste rate to 0.6 percent, which allowed saving and selling an additional 1.3 million liters of milk annually (Skrivervik, 2017). Just as companies may benefit financially by saving their products from becoming waste, consumers may rationalize their household spending by reducing food waste rates (Skrivervik, 2017). Hence, all stakeholders involved may potentially benefit from the policy in economic terms.

Apart from the purely financial gains, one should not discard the environmental benefits of the policy as well. Food waste that is not recycled usually ends up in landfills, where it decomposes naturally. As a part of the decomposition process, food produces carbon dioxide and methane, which are both greenhouse gases (Papargyropoulou, Lozano, Steinberger, Wright, & Ujang, 2014). Methane is especially significant in this respect, as it traps 21 times more heat than carbon dioxide (Papargyropoulou et al. 2014). As a result, larger amounts of wasted edible products correlate directly to the higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to climate change. Therefore, preventing food waste also results in environmental benefits.

Recommendation

Norwegian national food waste policy in its current shape should not be adopted in Dubai due to significant downsides in terms of policy evaluation. The broad gap between the ambitious goal of reducing the food waste by 50 percent and the virtual absence of well-developed evaluation mechanisms was already mentioned in this policy brief. Additionally, the lack of any industry-specific guidelines for structuring the information of food waste is also a notable disadvantage (Skrivervik, 2017). Considering these downsides, one may conclude that Norway’s national food waste policy is too underdeveloped for its implementation as a template by actors on national, municipal, or other levels.

An aspect of Norwegian national food waste policy that would be useful in Dubai is education on food consciousness. Hossameldin (2015) points out that, while waste prevention in the industry is reasonably effective, waste prevention in households still mandates considerable improvement. To remedy this situation, he calls for educational campaigns that would “alter food consumption behavior associated with excessive consumption and wastage” (Hossameldin, 2015, p. 22). In doing so, Dubai may implement Norwegian educational models that “strengthen environmental knowledge as well as motivate towards pro-environmental behavior,” such as the one used in The Magic Factory project (Skrivervik, 2017, p. 48). Thus, if Norwegian food waste policy is hardly applicable to Dubai in terms of regulating the industry, it is still possible to borrow some of its decisions that pertain to reducing food waste in households.

References

Hamilton. H.A., Peverill. M.S., Müller, D.B., & Brattebø, H. (2015). Assessment of food waste prevention and recycling strategies using a multilayer systems approach. Environmental Science & Technology, 49(24), 13937-13945.

Hanssen, O.J., & Gaiani, S. (2016). Norway – Country report on national food waste policy. Web.

Hossameldin, M.A.A. (2015). Food safety practices and their impacts on food waste generation and food security in food business manufacturing sector, Dubai, United Arab Emirates(Master’s thesis). Web.

Lucifero, N. (2016). Food loss and waste in the EU law between sustainability of well-being and the implications on food system and on environment. Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia, 8, 282-289.

Ministry of Climate and Environment of Norway (2017). Industry agreement on reduction of food waste. Web.

Papargyropoulou, E., Lozano, R. Steinberger, J.K., Wright, N., & Ujang, Z. (2014). The food waste hierarchy as a framework for the management of food surplus and food waste. Journal of Cleaner Production, 26, 106-115.

Skrivervik, E. (2017). Norwegian food waste policies: A valuation study(Master’s thesis). Web.

Click Here To Order Now!