Professor Jonathan Krones coauthors paper analyzing food waste

The so-called "sharing economy" has been widely touted as a greener way to produce and consume goods and services. With few exceptions, this claim has not been tested quantitatively, especially in applications outside of transportation. In this study, we partnered with the UK-based, mobile peer-to-peer excess food recovery and redistribution platform OLIO to analyze 170,000 food sharing offers and requests.

We characterized the nature of the distribution network and quantified GHG emissions implications associated with the food recovery and avoided disposal. We found that this model does result in significant quantities of food waste reduction and a notable environmental benefit. The full study, titled "Social and environmental analysis of food waste abatement via the peer-to-peer sharing economy", can be found here.