PhD Student: Valeria Frigerio (ORCID n. 0000-0002-9256-7439)
Tutor: Prof. Sara Limbo, Dipartimento di Scienze per gli Alimenti, la Nutrizione e l’Ambiente
Dean: Prof. Diego Mora
Research area: Food Science and Nutrition
PhD title achieved on: 17th March 2023
Research topic
Sustainability in food chain: integrated approaches to reduce food loss and food waste (SaveFoodPack)
Project Synopsis
In recent years, higher importance has been given to sustainability of packaging solutions, following the recent European strategies on Circular Economy. Simultaneously, the food wastage problem is far from its solution, representing one of the food chain’s paradoxes.
Recent scientific studies claim that packaging has properties that could help reducing food wastage at different levels, but currently there is no a general approach to consider them in packaging environmental evaluation.
With this PhD project, it is aimed to investigate the complex relationship that specific packaging features can create on the primary and secondary shelf life of selected food products, on their loss and wastage along the supply chain and on the material end-of-life options. This in order to develop a model that could be used in packaging Life Cycle Assessment studies to determine the real environmental impacts of packaging solutions. In this perspective, particular attention will be given to consumers’ behaviors toward sustainable packaging solutions and the relative levels of food waste generated.
Project keywords
Food packaging; Food waste; Sustainability; Packaging design to sustainability.
Contacts
Department of Food, Environmental and Nutritional Sciences, DeFENS
Food Packaging Lab, PackLab, Università degli Studi di Milano
Via Celoria 2, 20133, Milan/ Italy
valeria.frigerio@unimi.it
Sponsor
Fellowship sponsor: Università degli Studi di Milano
Publications
Posters:
Frigerio, V. “Eco-Design for Food Packaging as a Result of Its Properties and Performances”. Proceedings of the Fist Virual Workshop on the Developments in the Italian PhD Research on Food Science, Technology and Biotechnology. Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy, September 14- 15, 2021
Frigerio, V. “Life Cycle Thinking: a new scientific approach to prevent food wastage through sustainable packaging solutions (SaveFoodPack)”. Proceedings of the Workshop on the PhD Research in Food Systems. Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, September 14-18, 2020.
Others
Divulgation experiences:
Conference speaker at Pastaria Festival 2020 – “LCA del sistema packaging-alimento: uno strumento a supporto di scelte sostenibili”. Online conference, September 25, 2020.
Speaker for Food Hub Webinar – “Sostenibilità e packaging alimentare”. July 8, 2020.
Frigerio, V. “La sostenibilità del food packaging: questione di Life Cycle Thinking”. Blog post for Food Hub Magazine. May 22, 2020. https://www.foodhubmagazine.com/2020/05/22/la-sostenibilita-del-food-packaging-questione-di-life-cycle-thinking/
Additional experiences
Participation in the advanced course provided by Radboud University (NL). Advances in Environmental Life Cycle Modelling. Advanced Summer School. July 5-16, 2021.
Participation in the professional course provided by WFSC ETH Zurich (CH). Professional Short Course “Designing for Food Systems Resilience: A Circular Approach”. February 10-12, 2021.
Participation in the course held by Università di Parma (IT), School of Advanced Studies on Food and Nutrition – “Yakult academy on nutrition communication. Comunicazione scientifica in rete: opportunità e criticità nelle dinamiche social – 2a edizione”. Online course, September 21-28, 2020.
Institutional responsibilities
Representative of PhD students within the Department Council of DeFENS – Department of Food, Environmental and Nutritional Sciences of Università degli Studi di Milano
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