Causes and dimensions of food waste in the households of Romania

The paper aimed to present the profile of Romanian consumer food waste behaviour, in terms of weighted impacts. It is based on data provided by National Research and Development Institute for Food Bioresources-IBA Bucharest, the ADER 15.1.1. project “Socio-economic impact of food waste on the food safety and climate change crisis context”. The target group was national wide representative for over 18 y.o. urban population. Data have been processed into the following indicators: age, revenue, education, number of family members, geographical location, cities size. Over 900 persons responded, from 153 cities. The questionnaire was aiming for both individual and all family scale answers. Although the urban national percentile average of food waste is 10,4%, there is a wide scale of values, according to individual and social profile of the respondents. 1/5 of the population is wasting almost 50% from the total food waste. The study details the consumers behaviour, based on the previously mentioned indicators. The results indicated as high risk food waste consumer components: age under 35 y.o, living in big cities, university degree, medium to high income, shopping from retail network.