• SPRINT is part of the European Commission’s ‘Single Market Programme’ and aims to diagnose food waste and propose solutions for waste in hotel restaurants, supermarkets and homes.
• According to Tianyu Zhang, CREDA member in this project, “the study of these little-explored contexts will provide more significant and solid results that will provide valuable information to the staff responsible for policies”.

July 12, 2024

The Centre de Recerca en Economia i Desenvolupament Agroalimentari (CREDA) participates in the SPRINT project, an initiative that aims to mitigate food waste in hotel restaurants, homes and supermarkets, through the implementation of innovative and effective technological interventions capable of altering behavioural patterns.

SPRINT has received funding from the European Commission through the Single Market Program (SMP) which helps internal markets recover from the COVID-19 crisis. With this project, we aim to achieve three main objectives: (1) diagnose food waste and what drives it; (2) co-create, design and implement evidence-based intervention strategies that are more effective and sustainable; and (3) raise awareness and promote policy recommendations and operational guidelines on how to reduce and prevent food waste.

To carry out the project and achieve these goals, a systemic approach will be adopted that takes into account individual factors that favour waste, but also external factors that can affect individuals, such as context, culture, the infrastructure or architecture of choice. Thus, during a period of 12 months, the collaborating entities will carry out a study in three pilot cases (Hotel Artiem, Superercat Más y más, and homes), both in Asturias and in Catalonia.

Tianyu Zhang, PhD student in Sustainability, is one of the CREDA participants in SPRINT. For her, “the project will serve as a reference study for future efforts in the field of food waste“, as it “will reveal new evidence on the causes and possible solutions in little-explored contexts such as supermarkets and hotels“. Thus, “SPRINT will provide more meaningful and robust results that will provide valuable information to policymakers” to adjust current programs or develop new ones.

During the two years of the project’s life, the Catalan centre will participate in the tasks of several work packages (2, 3, 4 and 5) “by mapping and evaluating the initial situation, defining the methodologies of the pilot cases, implementing the selected interventions and collecting environmental, economic and social impact data“, explains Zhang.

According to data from the United Nations Organization (UN), food produced and not consumed in 2021 represented between 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Likewise, the 2022 count concluded that all households on all continents wasted the equivalent of more than 1 billion meals every day.

Faced with this situation, the SPRINT project aims to achieve a change in consumption behaviour patterns that reduces food waste through the combination of promotion strategies and technological tools that will consist of a mobile application, a program of open access and a sensor monitoring system.

SPRINT is led by the Club Asturiano de la Innovación (INNOVASTURIAS) and has a total of 7 partner entities from 2 autonomous communities: Asturias and Catalonia. CREDA is the organization that represents the Catalan community.