Wastages are common in every operation of day-to-day life and businesses, but it is necessary to take action to minimize the wastage in the future. For instance, if we need to buy home stuff for the following week's consumption, we will put the frozen items (ice cream and meat) and perishable items (vegetables, fruits, and dairy) in the basket at the end of the purchase to make sure the products we buy in good quality. Also, we buy them only if we have a refrigerator (working condition) at home, it has to be a short distance between home and the supermarket, and the packing condition of the products has to be friendly to carry and prevent shaking, we never buy them and get them wasted.
(Article link: https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/pdf/2021/27/e3sconf_ictees2021_03001.pdf)
This is how cold chain logistics happens in large-scale businesses, effective demand planning, by finding optimized routes, cost-effective transportation, storage facilities, appropriate packing to avoid damages, technological system establishment to ensure traceability and temperature maintenance, and a skilled workforce throughout the operation. Even though, with lots of expertise and planning of producing and transporting the products to the retailers, wastages keep on rising due to several reasons. Many organizations and researchers have identified the statistical record of cold chain product wastage and the root cause for the wastage. We will articulate them, in brief, to discover the methodology for minimizing wastage in the future.
A research article in the year 2021, by E3S Web of Conferences 251, 03001 (2021), Food Waste in Developed Countries and Cold Chain Logistics, identified that, about "one-third of the global vegetable and fruit production are still wasted". Around 40% of the food production is wasted in North America annually throughout the supply chain from farm to end customers. FAO mentioned that in year 2019, 1.3 billion tons of food were wasted per year which is $940 billion in economic losses, which is equivalent to 4.4 billion tons of CO2 emissions. The research paper pointed out, there are three major root causes of food waste. Around 50% of the waste is from households, which may be due to excessive purchasing or improper packaging, 35% of the wastage is during logistics (processing, transportation, and distribution) which may be due to a lack of integrated food supply chain process and around 10% of the wastage are from fields may be due to extreme weather condition or inappropriate harvesting and post-harvesting storage methods in the field..
UNEP and FAO 2022 article mentioned “Of the total food produced for human consumption, an estimated 14 percent is lost before the food reaches the customer. Lack of refrigeration is a major contributor to this problem” and overall food cold chain wastage is responsible for 4 percent of total global greenhouse emissions. This article suggested developing a cold chain in a circular approach instead of a linear one to have an interconnected and dynamic relationship throughout the entire operations in achieving a sustainable food cold chain system.
By the UNEP news article, the WHO estimated 50% of the vaccines are wasted globally every year, due to improper cold chain logistics operations.. (https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/why-optimized-cold-chains-could-save-billion-covid-vaccines). According to the National Institute of Health found that above 25% of healthcare facilities are wasted.
It is understood that, even though the world is moving to digitalized supply chain operations, there is a lapse in cold chain logistic operations. The primary root cause is the lack of healthy infrastructure to preserve cold chain products. As per precedence research, the cold chain market will reach up to USD 1,242 Billion by the Year 2033, whereas the current cold chain logistics value is USD 371.5 Billion. More than investment in technology, it is necessary for the companies to invest in developing cold chain logistics infrastructure and trained operators to minimize the wastage in coming years.
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