Dimensions of household food waste in Turkey

Food waste creates an increasing concern at the global level and searching methods how to solve food waste is also a significantly increasing. Finding adequate solutions and implementing is only possible through defining the problem. To solve a complicated problem like food waste which interests large popu-lation and has different kind of features for each product is a time consuming. At this point, revealing food waste at the different stages is important. The biggest share from the waste is taken by households. This study covers the analyses results of the surveys conducted in 3 big cities in different geographic region in order to identify household food waste's level in Turkey. Totally 1155 surveys were conducted in Erzurum, Izmir and Adana in June 2016 and 2017. In addition to food waste, its perception, food purchase and store behaviors of the consumers were investigated. The results show that households wasted about 7.5 tonnes food during the month surveys carried out. Only 180 families out of 1155 had no food waste and this number is higher in Erzurum. The highest food waste was observed in Adana where it was 3.3 tonnes per month while it was 2.6 tonnes in Erzurum and 1.6 tonnes in Izmir.