Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
6.8
3.3
Journals
Sustainability
Special Issues
Food and Sustainability
sustainability-logo
Submit to Sustainability Review for Sustainability Propose a Special Issue

Journal Menu

► Journal Menu

Journal Browser

► Journal Browser
share announcement

Food and Sustainability

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Food".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 April 2023) | Viewed by 20806

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Lynsey Hollywood

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Ulster University Business School, Ulster University, Belfast BT15 1ED, Northern Ireland
Interests: food choice; consumer behavior; behavioural change and marketing
Dr. Susann Power

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Ulster University Business School, Ulster University, Belfast BT15 1ED, Northern Ireland
Interests: sustainability in business and tourism; business and environmental ethics; entrepreneurship and pro-environmental behaviour change

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

  1. This Special Issue will focus broadly on how the food and drink industry can meet the challenge of embedding sustainability into its business strategies and operations as well as nudging consumers towards making more sustainable food choices. Many food businesses today are under pressure to demonstrate how their products and services are making a positive contribution towards society. However, one of the biggest challenges for businesses is progressing sustainability initiatives from an added benefit view to an integrated, value-driven to business approach.
  2. Embedding a sustainability focus into the business can present new market opportunities to develop products that consumers value and are willing to pay for. In helping to define the breadth of sustainability, The United Nations designed seventeen goals, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and 169 targets. However, the challenge for businesses is understanding how to adapt and embed these goals into their business. The SDGs can offer businesses a useful framework for understanding the type of contribution or impact their business can have on society. Some examples of topics relating to how businesses can embed the SDGs into their business might include the following: SDG1—No Poverty and SDG2—Zero Hunger (food redistrubtion, food poverty and insecurity), SDG3—Health and Wellbeing (development of healthy food products and food labelling), SDG12—Responsible Consumption and Production (ethical eating, food production and food manufacturing), SDG13—Climate Action (food waste, waste symbiosis and carbon emissions) and SDG14—Life below Water and SDG15—Life on Land (animal welfare and maritime welfare).
  3. The purpose of this issue is to explore how food and drink businesses can successfully embed the SDGs into their current strategies and shape future impacts on society.
  4. This Special Issue will seek to advance the literature beyond embedding the SDGs into management education (Dean et. al., 2019, Junior et. al., 2019 and Setó-Pamies, D. and Papaoikonomou, 2020) by addressing the how they can be embedded within an industry, particularly the food and drink industry.

Dean, B. A., Gibbons, B. and Perkiss, S. (2018) An Experiential Learning Activity for Integrating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Into Business Education. Social Business, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 387–409.

Junior, R.M.,  Fien, J. and Horne, R. (2019) Implementing the UN SDGs in Universities: Challenges, Opportunities, and Lessons Learned. Sustainability.Vol 12, No, 2, pp.129–133. http://doi.org/10.1089/sus.2019.0004

Setó-Pamies, D. and Papaoikonomou, E. (2020) Sustainable Development Goals: A Powerful Framework for Embedding Ethics, CSR, and Sustainability in Management Education, Sustainability, 12, 1762; doi:10.3390/su12051762  file:///C:/Users/e10415544/Downloads/sustainability-12-01762-v2.pdf

Dr. Lynsey Hollywood
Dr. Susann Power
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable development goals
  • food and drink
  • strategy
  • market opportunities
  • business sustainability

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Jump to: Review

24 pages, 4535 KiB  
Article
Policy Pathways for Mapping Clean Energy Access for Cooking in the Global South—A Case for Rural Communities
by Constantinos Vassiliades, Ogheneruona Endurance Diemuodeke, Eric Boachie Yiadom, Ravita D. Prasad and Wassim Dbouk
Sustainability 2022, 14(20), 13577; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013577 - 20 Oct 2022
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2574
Abstract
Currently, over 1.5 billion people, especially in the Global South, live without access to modern energy for household uses, especially for cooking. Therefore, this study examines the cooking space of the Global South with a specific focus on the rural communities to map [...] Read more.
Currently, over 1.5 billion people, especially in the Global South, live without access to modern energy for household uses, especially for cooking. Therefore, this study examines the cooking space of the Global South with a specific focus on the rural communities to map alternative energy sources, technologies and supporting policies to drive clean cooking services for improved socioeconomic development. It begins with a literature review on clean cooking technologies and clean energy access for the Global South, which leads to the suggestion of clean cooking policies by mapping technology, affordability, accessibility, climate action, business model and local capacity. In order to ensure that the validation is appropriate, three online questionnaires were designed to capture three categories of key stakeholders with distinctive and complementary interests in clean energy access for cooking: (i) End-users, (ii) Energy Suppliers and (iii) Interest Groups in rural communities in Fiji, Ghana and Nigeria. The responses are analysed to conduct a comparative study across the three countries examined. Based on the above, an attempt is made to present broad base policy pathways for adopting clean cooking services in the rural community for sustainable development. The policy pathways harmonize the major stakeholders in the cooking space: Governments, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), clean energy developers, business services and the end-users. In addition, a business model in the context of a rural community cooking space is proposed, stating that the initial life of the clean cooking business should be government-driven and, thereafter, followed by incentive-driven at the mid-life of the business (say, 25% technology penetration) and private-sector-driven at the late-life (say, 45% technology penetration). It is expected that the effort made in this work could be advanced by investigating the detailed techno-economic parameters of clean cooking technologies that could be influenced by the policy pathways established in connection with the sociocultural factors associated with energy services. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Food and Sustainability)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 344 KiB  
Article
Postharvest Losses in Quantity and Quality of Pear (cv. Packham’s Triumph) along the Supply Chain and Associated Economic, Environmental and Resource Impacts
by Anelle Blanckenberg, Olaniyi Amos Fawole and Umezuruike Linus Opara
Sustainability 2022, 14(2), 603; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14020603 - 6 Jan 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2487
Abstract
Approximately one third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted along the supply chain. Reducing this would be an important measure to increase the global food supply as the world continues the struggle to feed its people sustainably. Not merely a [...] Read more.
Approximately one third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted along the supply chain. Reducing this would be an important measure to increase the global food supply as the world continues the struggle to feed its people sustainably. Not merely a waste of food, these losses also represent a waste of human effort and agricultural inputs from expensive fertilizers to natural resources as well as contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions. Measuring the extent of, and understanding the reasons for, these losses can assist in developing appropriate measures required to prevent or reduce such losses. Therefore, the objective of this research was to quantify postharvest losses in quantity and quality of ‘Packham’s Triumph’ pears at farm and simulated retail levels. Pears were sampled from two farms in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, the largest deciduous fruit production and export region in Southern Africa. The greatest losses measured along the supply chain were on-farm immediately after harvest, with 18% recorded. The main reasons for on-farm losses were small size (65%), deformity (26%), and chafed peel (9%). After 14 days in cold storage (−0.3 ± 0.7 °C, 81.3 ± 4.1% RH), mean pear losses were 0.86% which increased to 1.49% after 28 days. After 10 days of further storage under simulated market conditions (5.4 ± 0.6 °C, 83.7 ± 2.9% RH), fruit losses were 1.52% during retail marketing and 2.09% during export. Storing pears under ambient conditions (25.1 ± 1.3 °C and 46.6 ± 6.0% RH) resulted in a higher incidence of losses, increasing from 0.90 to 1.55 and 2.25% after 3, 7, and 10 days, respectively. The socio-economic impacts of these postharvest losses amounted to financial losses of between ZAR 492 million (USD 34.1 million according to the conversion rate of 14 April 2021) to over ZAR 831 million annually, and this was associated with the loss of 301 million MJ of fossil energy, 69 million m3 of fresh water and contributed to the emission of approximately 19,690 tons of CO2 equivalent. The fresh water lost could sustain 3.7 million individuals daily for a whole year at a daily minimum usage rate of 0.05 m3 per day while it will require planting 0.5 million trees to sink the 19,690 tons GHG emissions of the pear losses (0.039 metric ton per urban tree planted). Decreasing postharvest losses will conserve resources as well as improve food security and nutrition, objectives of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda led by the United Nations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Food and Sustainability)

Review

Jump to: Research

22 pages, 3030 KiB  
Review
A Review of Environmental Life Cycle Assessments of Diets: Plant-Based Solutions Are Truly Sustainable, even in the Form of Fast Foods
by Anna Kustar and Dalia Patino-Echeverri
Sustainability 2021, 13(17), 9926; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179926 - 3 Sep 2021
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 14114
Abstract
This paper’s purpose is to shed light on the current understanding of the environmental benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets, considering the inclusion of a significant share of processed foods, such as plant-based burgers. We review recent Environmental Life Cycle Assessments of the [...] Read more.
This paper’s purpose is to shed light on the current understanding of the environmental benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets, considering the inclusion of a significant share of processed foods, such as plant-based burgers. We review recent Environmental Life Cycle Assessments of the three main diet types, omnivore, vegetarian, and vegan, and then assesses the environmental impacts of adding two commercial brands of plant-based burgers to vegetarian and vegan diets. The recent literature confirms that compared to omnivore diets adhering to the same dietary guidelines, vegan diets reduce land-use impacts by 50–86%, water use by 22–70%, and greenhouse gas emissions by 21–70%, while vegetarian diets achieve reductions of 27–84% in land use, 15–69% in water use, and 24–56% in greenhouse emissions. The environmental benefits of vegan and vegetarian diets are not affected by the consumption of highly processed plant-based burgers. Consumers reduce land use, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions between 87% and 96% by choosing a Beyond or Impossible burger instead of a regular beef patty. These results are robust to the uncertainties associated with a variety of beef production systems; there is no indication that a situation or condition may make beef burgers more environmentally friendly than these two plant-based alternatives, or that the addition of plant-based meats to vegan and vegetarian diets may reduce their environmental benefits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Food and Sustainability)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-3
Back to TopTop