Minimizing then Closing Material Cycles: The Ignored Potential of Food Waste Reduction to Transform the Urban Food Metabolism of the Paris Metropolitan Area

Food waste constitutes the majority of biowaste in cities. Although its reduction is prioritized on political agendas, its potential to minimize environmental impacts from urban consumption and to limit the scale of closed material loops has been disregarded. This paper aims to quantify food waste at city level and to qualify its minimization potential by developing a method using the urban metabolism framework and a set of granular data sources, taking the Paris metropolitan area (France) as a case study. The findings show that, in 2014, food waste at the level of Paris metropolitan area amounted to 783 kt, that is, 101 kg per capita. They also show that a minimum of 29% of this food waste was subject to reduction policies since this share concerned once edible food wasted by households, the biggest contributing sector. Local authorities should monitor waste composition closely, at least for households and public institutions. A distinction should moreover be made between edible and inedible parts, as the politically desired increase of biowaste collection should be limited to the waste of inedible parts of food, controlled by means of efficient reduction policies for wasted food. This quantification study for the year 2014 can be considered a starting point, or a baseline, for the future assessment of food waste. Reduction targets for food waste announced by the government of cities like Paris can be effectively controlled only when a methodology and appropriate data are available to monitor progress.