International Journal AgroFor, Vol. 1 (No.

1), 2016
10.7251/AGRENG1601172S
UDC 641:17(611)
FOOD WASTAGE BY TUNISIAN HOUSEHOLDS
Khaled SASSI1*, Roberto CAPONE2, Ghassen ABID3, Philipp DEBS2, Hamid EL
BILALI2, Olfa Daaloul BOUACHA1, Francesco BOTTALICO2,4, Noureddin
DRIOUECH2, Dorra Sfayhi TERRAS5
1

University of Carthage, National Agronomic Institute of Tunisia (INAT), Department of

Agronomy and Plant Biotechnology, Tunis-Mahrajne, Tunisia
2
Sustainable Agriculture, Food and Rural Development Department, International Centre
for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies of Bari (CIHEAM-Bari), Italy
3
University of Tunis El Manar, Center of Biotechnology of Borj Cedria, Laboratory of
Legumes, Hammam-Lif, Tunisia
4
Parthenope University of Naples, Department of Science and Technology, Naples, Italy
5
National Agricultural Research Institute of Tunisia, Ariana, Tunisia
*Corresponding author: [email protected]

ABSTRACT
Food waste (FW) is seen as an obstacle to achieving food and nutrition security and
food systems sustainability. It is known in literature that households are significant
contributors to the total amount of FW. This paper reports on results of an online
survey that was conducted from February to April 2015 with a random sample of
281 Tunisian adults. The aim of the survey is to assess the knowledge and relative
importance of FW; attitudes towards FW; impacts of behaviors regarding food and
food management; quantity and value of FW; as well as barriers and willingness to
behavioral change. The sample was not gender-balanced (71.2% female and 28.8%
male). The majority of the respondents was young (70.8% aged between 18 and 34
years) and has high education level (95.4% having university and PhD degrees).
Food waste is prevalent in Tunisia as about the half of respondents declare that
they throw food. The most wasted food products are fruits, vegetables, and cereals
and bakery products. Only 42.7% of respondents declared that the economic value
of food waste generated each month is more than 6US$. Most of Tunisian
respondents have a good understanding of food labels that is probably due to the
high education level of the sample. About 37% of respondents throw weekly at
least 250 g of still consumable food. To reduce FW in Tunisia it is important to set
a strategy at all food chain levels. There is also an urgent need to raise peoples and
organizations awareness towards this problem. This article provides a basis for the
development of other more context specific investigations and interventions for the
prevention of household FW in Tunisia.
Keywords: Household food waste, consumer behavior, online survey, Tunisia

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INTRODUCTION
Food security has become a global concern in recent years following the climate
change conditions and global food security challenges and consequently food price
volatilities. The Near East and North Africa (NENA) region, including Tunisia,
relies on food imports to meet over 50% of its total food requirements and still
experiences a food deficit. At the same time, the region loses and wastes a
significant amount of food, up to 250 kg per person each year, a figure that is
higher than the global average (FAO, 2014). Moreover, according to the Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) almost a third of all food produced globally, or 1.3
billion tons of food, is lost or wasted every year (Gustavsson et al., 2011). In
Tunisia there is very little data on food losses and waste. The figures for food loss
and waste are hard to quantify and are dependent on the types of foods. Municipal
solid waste is characterized by a strong presence of biodegradable organic matter
(68%) with a specific production of 0.815 kg/capita/day in urban areas and 0.150
kg/capita/day in rural areas. Only 5% of food waste gets composted (ANGed,
2014). Fruit, vegetables, meat, fish and dairy products are inherently perishable and
without proper transport and storage, their shelf life is dramatically low. The lack
of access to cold chain systems and reliable energy sources required to power them
is therefore the major cause of food loss in Tunisia (Kader, 2005). Other causes
include harvesting practices (e.g. poor harvesting methods where food is left in the
field, substandard harvesting equipment and poor sorting-where pests or diseases
are not detected or the mixing of good and bad quality products together during
grading which lowers the overall quality); supply chain management (e.g. lack of
quality control in managing post-harvest collection and storage, lack of sufficient
systems controls in processing/packaging of food and failures in operation and
maintenance of storage facilities); and government and policy regulations (e.g.
poor regulations that impede innovation and trade, lack of unified and coherent
national policies and lack of market mechanisms to reward cold chain
investments). Such as the case for the majority of countries in NENA region,
reducing food loss and waste is critical for Tunisia that faces limited possibilities to
increase its food production, and that depends on food imports to meet the food
needs of its population (Barre, 2013). Indeed, food loss and waste reduction is the
most feasible and quick win approach to increasing food availability and security in
contrast to increasing food production. To address and reduce food loss and waste,
a strategic approach is required that emphasizes coordination between all relevant
actors, including public institutions and private sector agencies, food producers and
handlers, and civil society institutions, through responsible and sustainable policies
and effective compliance mechanisms. In order to help achieving food security in
Tunisia, the Tunisian government must develop a strategic framework in close
collaboration with international organizations such as FAO, civil society
organizations and private sector to reduce food loss and waste within the coming
years.
This preliminary paper summarizes findings from an exploratory survey to
investigate the causes of food waste and identify solutions to reduce it in Tunisia.
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MATERIALS AND METHODS
During the last years, the Department of Sustainable Agriculture, Food and Rural
Development of the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari (IAMB), that is
one of the four institutes of the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean
Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM) - in collaboration with FAO and other Italian,
Mediterranean and international institutions - has undertaken different activities on
the sustainability of the Mediterranean food system. In the framework of these
activities, a particular attention was devoted to the issue of food waste in the
Mediterranean region. In the Mediterranean area, precise and accurate data
regarding food waste and losses should be enhanced. In the final declaration of the
10th meeting of the CIHEAM member states agriculture ministers held in Algiers
in February 2014 the relevance of food waste issue in the Mediterranean countries
was strongly stressed (CIHEAM, 2014).
The present paper is based on a review of literature and the results of a voluntary
survey carried out in Tunisia using a questionnaire that was adapted to the Tunisian
context from previous questionnaires and studies on food waste carried out by the
Office of Environment and Heritage in 2011 in the State of New South Wales
(NSW), Australia (OEH, 2011), and by the University of Bologna (Last Minute
Market, 2014).
The tool used to conduct the food waste survey is a self-administered
questionnaire. It was designed and developed in French language in December
2014 and was made available from January until the end of March 2015 through
the Survio website (http://www.survio.com/survey/d/K2O7B2J5Y7J9N8N9A).
Participation was entirely on a voluntary basis and responses were analysed only in
aggregate.
Survio online survey service (survio.com) began as a start-up in the Czech
Republic and was launched formally in April 2012. It provides a free and easy tool
for any type of online survey. The product provides plenty of ready-made survey
templates, layouts and styles. It helps to easily create a new survey with
professional content and viewing the collected responses in real-time, using tables,
charts, PDF reports and data files for most file types.
Various communication channels were used for survey dissemination, such as
institutional websites (e.g. http://www.inrat.agrinet.tn), social media (e.g.
Facebook) and emails.
The questionnaire consisted of 26 questions. It included a combination of one
option and multiple-choice questions. It was developed into six sections: Food
purchase behavior and household food expenditure estimation; Knowledge of food
labeling information; Attitudes towards food waste; Extent of household food
waste; Economic value of household food waste; Willingness and information
needs to reduce food waste.
In the introductory part of the questionnaire, the concept of food losses and waste
was introduced to inform the respondents.
Data were analysed using descriptive statistics (e.g. means, max, min), in order to
get a general picture of frequencies of variables, using Microsoft Excel.
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From 289 questionnaires received, 8 were not considered because there were
missing data. Therefore, the total number of the sample is 281 adult Tunisians. The
majority of the respondents were female (71.2%) compared to 28.8% of males;
they were quite young since 70.8% aged between 18 and 34 years old. About 44%
of the respondents are living with parents. The respondents present high level of
education with 95.4% having university and PhD degrees. Three, four or five
person-households have the highest share (89.7%). The number of households with
six and more persons is almost negligible. About 50.9% of the respondents are
employees (full time or part time work) and 39.1% are students (Table 1).
Table 1. Respondents profile (n=281).
Items
Gender

Age

Female
Male
18-24

Percentage (%)
71.2
28.8
31.3

25-34

39.5

35-44

18.5

45-54
55 and over

5.0

Single person household

Living with parents

5.7
2.8
43.8

Partnered

7.5

Married with children

33.1

Family status

11.4
Shared household, non-related
Other
Primary school
Secondary school
Level of education

Technical qualification
University degree
Higher degree (MSc, PhD)

Household composition

1.4
0.4
0.7
3.2
48.4
47.0

No formal schooling

0.4

1 to 3

32.3

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(number of members)

4 to 6

7 to 10
> 10
In paid work (full time or part
time)
Student
Occupation
Unemployed and looking for
work
Home duties
Retired/ Age pensioner
*Source: Authors elaboration based on the survey results.

57.4
10.3
0
50.9
39.1
8.2
0.7
1.1

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

To estimate the proportion of food waste in households waste, methodologies such
as enquiries or waste sorting analyses have been used. The results of enquiries give
qualitative information like kind and frequency of wasted food and reasons for
wasting it based on self-reported behavior of the respondents. Furthermore,
information about interrelated conditions (e.g. level of employment, age of
household members) and behaviour (e.g. buying, cooking and diet habits) have
been gathered. The collected data are also important for monitoring and planning
of waste management systems.
There are large differences concerning shopping behaviors between respondents.
More than thirty-nine percent of the respondents reported that they exclusively
shop in large supermarkets. Thirty-seven percent of the respondents purchase food
also in small shops and 23.5% visit local markets in addition to other shopping
facilities. Supermarkets and hypermarkets have marketing strategies to attract
consumers and increase their purchase, thus increasing the possibility to wasting
food. The answers to the question Do you think you are drawn to special offers?
(e.g., buy one get one free, three for the price of two, etc.) revealed that 46.3%
of households are attracted by special offers. Surprisingly, no person among all
respondents declared to produce own food, to shop online or to use home delivery.
Interestingly, most households purchase groceries every day (34.5%), every two
days (14.6%) or twice a week (18.9%). It is known that there are specific amounts
of food thrown away in relation to shopping frequency. In general, a decreasing in
food waste generation with decreasing shopping frequency could be observed.
Only 29.2% of households use a shopping list. According to Jrissen et al. (2015),
the amount of food waste is higher when no shopping list is used.
In general, the highest percentage (more than 30%) of foods that are thrown away
sometimes or often relates to fruit, vegetables, cereals, legumes, milk, bread, fish,
roots and tubers.

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With respect to the reasons why food is wasted, food conserved in fridge for too
long time, food is out of date, food is moldy and food smelled/tasted bad
(63.3%, 51.2%, 35.9% and 34.2%, respectively) are mentioned much more
frequently as reasons for discarding food (Figure 1). All other reasons were
mentioned less frequently (less than 25%), which suggests that they are of minor
importance.

Figure 1. Reasons that lead to food being wasted (percentage of respondents who
ticked the given reasons).
*Source: Authors elaboration based on the survey results.

The respondents were asked to estimate the amount of edible food they dispose off
in their households per week based on predefined categories, ranging from
throwing away nothing up to more than 2 kg at highest (the specified categories
were: nothing, less than 250 g, 250-500, 500-1000, 1000-2000, and more than 2000
g per household/week). More than thirty-nine percent of the respondents stated that
they do not throw away any edible food, whereas only 1.8% of households
conceded that they dispose off more than 2 kg (Figure 2). A simple extrapolation of
these figures to the entire Tunisian population results in 292,000 tons of food waste
per year for Tunisia. Compared to the quantities estimated in the GIZ study
(ANGed , 2014) of 4,033 million tons per year for Tunisia, the amounts of food
waste calculated based on our survey are very small.

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Figure 2. Average amount of household food waste per capita and per week.
*Source: Authors elaboration based on the survey results.

The majority of respondents indicated that they already strive towards reducing
food waste (64.4%). The most mentioned activities referred to organizational
improvements, like optimized planning of meals according to needs, tailored food
purchases, consumption of perishable food items in time, adequate storage and
reuse of leftovers.
Information that would be needed to reduce food waste by households is primarily
knowledge on the freshness and durability of a product. With similar significance,
advice is required about how to share or donate food, how to store food correctly
and recipes for how to use leftovers. Respondents would like to receive further
information. Further ideas for the distribution of information are related to the
products themselves, supermarkets, and websites of local authorities. A
considerable share of respondents needs and wishes no further tips.
As mentioned above, the population of the survey presented in this study is not
representative for Tunisia. The main reason is that the survey was limited to an
academic environment. Moreover, the questionnaire was distributed via Internet
and the response to it was voluntary. Due to the method used and the circle of
addressees, lower income classes, households with a lower educational level,
young people (below 18 years) and the elderly (persons aged 60 years and above)
were not adequately represented in the sample. Thus, the results cannot be reliably
extrapolated to the entire population of Tunisia. Nevertheless, they provide some
interesting insights into households behaviors.
Surprisingly, the survey revealed that the generation of food waste per capita per
week is higher than 250g for 37.1% of respondent households and less than 250g
for the 23.5%, far below the level found in other studies (Monier et al., 2010;
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Kranert et al., 2012) such as in Germany (1500g) and Italy (from 884 to 2000g).
We suggest that among the reasons for the low waste rates in the survey might be
that the predefined choices for food waste generation offered in the questionnaire
were scheduled too low. This may have misled respondents to specify their real
waste rates at the lowest limit. Moreover, it is possible that households in general
tend to underestimate their food wastage. Interestingly, 39.5% of respondents
testify in the interview that they throw away nothing, while Ventour (2008) reports
that households testifying in the interview that they throw away nothing actually
generated 88 kg of avoidable food waste a year. Another reason could be that the
survey was restricted to an academic milieu. Furthermore, the food waste generated
by the respondents out of home in hotels, restaurants, canteens, take away, coffee
shops, etc. was not subject of the survey. Moreover, it is likely that people who
have completed the questionnaire were mostly already sensitized to the issue of
food wasting or are at least more aware of the problem than other people. This
assumption is backed up by the fact that more than 72.2% of the respondents stated
that they care very much about food waste and try to avoid it whenever possible.
According to Williams et al. (2012), the participants who have a high
environmental consciousness waste less food.
Concerning the food items wasted, survey data revealed that cereal and bakery
products such as bread, rice and pasta followed by vegetables, milk and dairy
products are the largest contributors to food waste. The present data are not in
agreement with previous results of Langley et al. (2010) and Quested et al. (2013)
who reported that, the largest contributors to food waste are easily perishable items
like fresh fruit and vegetables, followed by bakery, dairy products and eggs.
Several studies investigated the reasons for the generation of food waste (GrahamRowe et al. 2014) and have come to quite similar results. The most common
reasons that lead to food wastage are: Food is out of date; Food looked, smelled,
tasted bad/moldy; Food conserved in fridge/cupboard for too long; Wrong planning
of meals; No need-based shopping; Wrong packaging size; Insufficient cooking
skills; Incorrect storage; Food is served in high quantity; Household member did
not like ingredients.
Looking at the findings of the survey with respect to previous researches, the most
commonly cited reason to discard food in Tunisia was In fridge/cupboard too
long (63.3%), Served too much, leftovers, did not like ingredients (51.2%),
Looked, smelled, tasted bad/moldy (35.9%) followed by Out of date (34.2%).
This indicates that respondents in Tunisia seem to trust more in their sensory
perception.
In accordance with previous studies, the survey endorses the finding that
households shopping practices have a huge impact on the level of food wasting.
The most frequented stores for purchasing groceries in Tunisia are large
supermarkets and mini-markets (39.5 and 37%, respectively) and only 23% for
local markets. Previous studies found that the amount of food thrown away is
highest when people exclusively shop in large supermarkets, decreases when
purchasing takes place in different shopping facilities, and is lowest when people
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also grow their own food (Jrissen et al., 2015). This would suggest that people
who spend a lot of time shopping in small shops or local markets attribute a higher
value to foods than people who prefer the quick and convenient large
supermarkets.
Next to the type of shopping facility chosen, the shopping frequency also could
affect the amount of food waste. Here the survey shows that 34.5% of respondents
do shopping every day. According to Williams et al. (2012), an increasing
shopping frequency allows for a better matching with the daily needs. The
purchase of large quantities for the whole week in contrast, would increase the
probability of spoilage, especially of perishable products, such as vegetables, bread
and milk. Graham-Rowe et al. (2014) provide another rather psychological
foundation.
In Tunisia, only 29.2% of the households surveyed use a shopping list. Previous
studies revealed that when using a shopping list, the amount of food thrown away
per capita is lower (Lyndhurst et al., 2007).
CONCLUSION
The available studies show that there are great discrepancies between the amounts
of food waste calculated based on statistical data on food supply or municipal
waste and the amount of food waste measured in household surveys. The results of
statistical estimates are in general higher than the results of household surveys.
This observation indicates that great efforts are required to improve the methods
for statistical data collection and processing. Lower income classes, households
with lower education level, and the elderly (persons aged 65 years and above) are
not adequately represented in this study. Further considerations are much needed
on how to overcome these barriers.
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