Society's Sustainable Sandwich - increasing circularity and sustainability with robust metrics

The sandwich is the cornerstone of the UK's takeaway ambient food market and is widely prepared at home. The sandwich contains diverse ingredients from across the globe and are produced in diverse ways with complex supply chains. Takeaway sandwiches are wrapped to preserve food quality and safety, but packaging may not be designed for easy reuse or recycling. Food waste arises at manufacture from changes in supply, demand and interruptions. Moving towards circularity requires innovation and enhanced understanding of the metrics by which circularity and sustainability can be measured and communicated to stakeholders.
Hypothesis
Current circularity metrics are not adequate for the food industry, as they mainly focus on material flows and end-of-life management (e.g. the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Material Circularity Index). The complexity of food-material flows (e.g. nutrient consumption and transformations) needs suitable, comprehensive, and harmonised metrics for improving resource use and value creation from bio-resources together with ensuring sustainability by measuring it with validated and robust methods.
Aim and objectives
This project aims to develop a harmonised methodology and metrics to aid the food sector transition to a circular economy model while improving and ensuring sustainability. Ready-made sandwiches will be the pilot food group and our partner Samworth Brothers and its supply chain will be key to providing data (e.g. supply chain data, energy/water usage), co-developing and testing strategies and validating results.
The specific objectives are:
1. to develop and define Food Circularity Metrics (FCM) as a set of comprehensive and harmonised indicators, under a system thinking approach that avoids one-dimensional understanding of sustainability
2. to develop an approachable framework on FCM using Life Cycle thinking (e.g. LCA, LCC, S-LCA) to assess new products, technologies and business models, and track progress towards circularity
3. to investigate (through experimentation, simulation and modelling) innovative technologies and strategies for food waste valorisation and food circularity in the sandwich supply chain that will serve as evidence for industrial and potentially policy interventions