The measurement of material, energy, water, and waste flows in organizations represents a key cha... more The measurement of material, energy, water, and waste flows in organizations represents a key challenge in the enhancement of a circular economy and sustainable development. In November 2022, the experimental technical standard “Measurement of Circularity—Methods and Indicators for Measuring Circular Processes in Organizations” (UNI/TS 11820:2022) was introduced, which provides, for the first time, a set of 71 quantitative, qualitative and semi-quantitative indicators for the assessment of the levels of circularity in organizations at the micro- and meso-level. First, the present exploratory research aimed to illustrate the main characteristics of the novel technical standard. Second, through an online-based questionnaire among 105 managers and employees working in various industrial sectors in Italy, the research aimed to investigate their level of awareness and perception of selected circular economy monitoring indicators. Such an analysis will help to identify the weaknesses and ...
Sustainable development and environmental issues related to ports and sea trade have highlighted ... more Sustainable development and environmental issues related to ports and sea trade have highlighted the need to enhance transport and trade systems to include green practices, such as the realisation of dry ports. However, among the current studies investigating dry ports’ implications, only few papers explore their environmental impacts. Moreover, these latter papers approach the argument in a general way, leaving the ecological concerns associated with dry ports under-researched or marginally explored. In light of these premises, with the present review, the authors aim to develop a new conceptual framework on the dry ports’ environmental aspects in order to drive and support future academic research in this field. The methodology used by the authors is a systematic literature review on Scopus and Web of Science. They identified 107 relevant articles, of which 43 were included according to the authors’ propositions. The main results show that (i) there is no coordination between the ...
The European Union has enacted several strategies to reach sustainability and tackle climate chan... more The European Union has enacted several strategies to reach sustainability and tackle climate change. Among them, the New circular economy action plan and the Farm to Fork Strategy could represent for hotels, restaurants and resorts the leverage points towards sustainable and economic development. The present research, through a systematic and critical review of the current trends in the hospitality industry in Europe, explores and investigates 62 papers published in national and international journals. It fills in the gaps related to circular economy, farm to fork and sustainable resource and waste management empirical practices in the hospitality industry. It emerges that food waste, water and energy consumption have been the most topical concerns from 2011 to 2021, whereas ecosystems protection, rural and urban development need more care. As a common thread, consumers’ and operators’ awareness helps in translating economic into environmental benefits, whereas the development of li...
The transition to sustainable food systems is one of the main challenges facing national and inte... more The transition to sustainable food systems is one of the main challenges facing national and international action plans. It is estimated that food services and lodging accommodation activities are under pressure in terms of resource consumption and waste generation, and several tools are required to monitor their ecological transition. The present research adopts a semi-systematic and critical review of the current trends in the food service and lodging accommodation industries on a global scale and investigates the real current environmental indicators adopted internationally that can help to assess ecological transition. This research tries to answer the subsequent questions: (i) how has the ecological transition in the food service industry been monitored? and (ii) how has the ecological transition in the lodging accommodation industry been monitored? Our study reviews 66 peer-reviewed articles and conference proceedings included in Web of Science between 2015 and 2021. The resul...
Conventional and intensive agriculture systems represent an environmental challenge. This researc... more Conventional and intensive agriculture systems represent an environmental challenge. This research aims at evaluating the economic and environmental implications of conventional and organic durum wheat production in Southern Italy by applying material flow analysis and the crop accounting method. The purpose is to evaluate and compare the natural resource consumption, waste generation and economic profitability of conventional and organic durum wheat farming, respectively. The functional unit is one hectare of cultivated land. System boundaries encompass all agronomic operations, from cradle to gate. The research applies a bottom-up approach and relies on either primary or secondary data. It emerges that organic durum wheat production reduces the use of synthetic chemical and phytosanitary products, as well as plastic waste, by up to 100%. Moreover, it decreases diesel use by 15%, with a consequent reduction in CO2 emissions, and also avoids soil and groundwater pollution. From an e...
Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management, 2022
Poultry meat production and consumption face several challenges under economic, social and enviro... more Poultry meat production and consumption face several challenges under economic, social and environmental perspectives, and increasing concerns are associated with food loss and waste minimization. One of the main issues is related to the absence of a homogeneous and standardized separate collection of bio-waste at country level, which makes chicken bones, skin and food waste valorization a challenging goal. The present research, implementing the material flow analysis to the Italian poultry sector, aims at measuring poultry-related co-products and by-products, exploring food waste, chicken bones and skin and the current trends in the Italian bio-waste separate collection. Then, it discusses alternative separate collection strategies and sustainable consumption habits. Data have been collected according to a research triangulation approach, whereas system boundaries consider slaughterhouse, distribution and final consumption stage. It emerges that more than 1.50 Mt of live animals ha...
Islam is the second-largest religion on a global scale. All around the world Muslims are estimate... more Islam is the second-largest religion on a global scale. All around the world Muslims are estimated to comprise more than 1.9 billion people. Therefore, the demand for Halal commodities is expected to reach a high growth rate: thus, it is crucial to increase its global market’s reliability and traceability. Based on these grounds, the scope of this paper is to assess Halal food sustainability, examining the barriers and opportunities offered by the certification and blockchain tools. To this purpose, the authors carried out an integrative literature review, selecting 54 contributions in the Web of Science platform. Despite several limitations, such as the lack of a standardized framework or universally accepted and reliable certifying authorities, the implementation of blockchain technology has emerged as an interesting instrument to increase the trustworthiness and traceability of Halal foods. This tool could also help the development of protocols and standard procedures, ensuring h...
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Purpose The hospitality industry is responsible for significant amounts of waste, more than one-t... more Purpose The hospitality industry is responsible for significant amounts of waste, more than one-third of which is food waste. Through the comparison between an Italian and a Romanian hotel, this paper aims to provide a better understanding of food waste management trends in the hotel industry as well as to highlight hotel kitchens and hotel food services weaknesses and opportunities to minimize food waste. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews, personal communication and observations were conducted to investigate food service planning, food procurement and food waste management, as well as to better comprehend current individuals’ understanding and attitudes, infrastructures, legislative culture and opportunities either from the managerial and the employees’ perspective. Data were analyzed according to a content analysis approach. Findings Three critical hot spots emerged from the analysis: prediction and check of guests’ attendance, communication and transparency with loc...
The measurement of material, energy, water, and waste flows in organizations represents a key cha... more The measurement of material, energy, water, and waste flows in organizations represents a key challenge in the enhancement of a circular economy and sustainable development. In November 2022, the experimental technical standard “Measurement of Circularity—Methods and Indicators for Measuring Circular Processes in Organizations” (UNI/TS 11820:2022) was introduced, which provides, for the first time, a set of 71 quantitative, qualitative and semi-quantitative indicators for the assessment of the levels of circularity in organizations at the micro- and meso-level. First, the present exploratory research aimed to illustrate the main characteristics of the novel technical standard. Second, through an online-based questionnaire among 105 managers and employees working in various industrial sectors in Italy, the research aimed to investigate their level of awareness and perception of selected circular economy monitoring indicators. Such an analysis will help to identify the weaknesses and ...
Sustainable development and environmental issues related to ports and sea trade have highlighted ... more Sustainable development and environmental issues related to ports and sea trade have highlighted the need to enhance transport and trade systems to include green practices, such as the realisation of dry ports. However, among the current studies investigating dry ports’ implications, only few papers explore their environmental impacts. Moreover, these latter papers approach the argument in a general way, leaving the ecological concerns associated with dry ports under-researched or marginally explored. In light of these premises, with the present review, the authors aim to develop a new conceptual framework on the dry ports’ environmental aspects in order to drive and support future academic research in this field. The methodology used by the authors is a systematic literature review on Scopus and Web of Science. They identified 107 relevant articles, of which 43 were included according to the authors’ propositions. The main results show that (i) there is no coordination between the ...
The European Union has enacted several strategies to reach sustainability and tackle climate chan... more The European Union has enacted several strategies to reach sustainability and tackle climate change. Among them, the New circular economy action plan and the Farm to Fork Strategy could represent for hotels, restaurants and resorts the leverage points towards sustainable and economic development. The present research, through a systematic and critical review of the current trends in the hospitality industry in Europe, explores and investigates 62 papers published in national and international journals. It fills in the gaps related to circular economy, farm to fork and sustainable resource and waste management empirical practices in the hospitality industry. It emerges that food waste, water and energy consumption have been the most topical concerns from 2011 to 2021, whereas ecosystems protection, rural and urban development need more care. As a common thread, consumers’ and operators’ awareness helps in translating economic into environmental benefits, whereas the development of li...
The transition to sustainable food systems is one of the main challenges facing national and inte... more The transition to sustainable food systems is one of the main challenges facing national and international action plans. It is estimated that food services and lodging accommodation activities are under pressure in terms of resource consumption and waste generation, and several tools are required to monitor their ecological transition. The present research adopts a semi-systematic and critical review of the current trends in the food service and lodging accommodation industries on a global scale and investigates the real current environmental indicators adopted internationally that can help to assess ecological transition. This research tries to answer the subsequent questions: (i) how has the ecological transition in the food service industry been monitored? and (ii) how has the ecological transition in the lodging accommodation industry been monitored? Our study reviews 66 peer-reviewed articles and conference proceedings included in Web of Science between 2015 and 2021. The resul...
Conventional and intensive agriculture systems represent an environmental challenge. This researc... more Conventional and intensive agriculture systems represent an environmental challenge. This research aims at evaluating the economic and environmental implications of conventional and organic durum wheat production in Southern Italy by applying material flow analysis and the crop accounting method. The purpose is to evaluate and compare the natural resource consumption, waste generation and economic profitability of conventional and organic durum wheat farming, respectively. The functional unit is one hectare of cultivated land. System boundaries encompass all agronomic operations, from cradle to gate. The research applies a bottom-up approach and relies on either primary or secondary data. It emerges that organic durum wheat production reduces the use of synthetic chemical and phytosanitary products, as well as plastic waste, by up to 100%. Moreover, it decreases diesel use by 15%, with a consequent reduction in CO2 emissions, and also avoids soil and groundwater pollution. From an e...
Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management, 2022
Poultry meat production and consumption face several challenges under economic, social and enviro... more Poultry meat production and consumption face several challenges under economic, social and environmental perspectives, and increasing concerns are associated with food loss and waste minimization. One of the main issues is related to the absence of a homogeneous and standardized separate collection of bio-waste at country level, which makes chicken bones, skin and food waste valorization a challenging goal. The present research, implementing the material flow analysis to the Italian poultry sector, aims at measuring poultry-related co-products and by-products, exploring food waste, chicken bones and skin and the current trends in the Italian bio-waste separate collection. Then, it discusses alternative separate collection strategies and sustainable consumption habits. Data have been collected according to a research triangulation approach, whereas system boundaries consider slaughterhouse, distribution and final consumption stage. It emerges that more than 1.50 Mt of live animals ha...
Islam is the second-largest religion on a global scale. All around the world Muslims are estimate... more Islam is the second-largest religion on a global scale. All around the world Muslims are estimated to comprise more than 1.9 billion people. Therefore, the demand for Halal commodities is expected to reach a high growth rate: thus, it is crucial to increase its global market’s reliability and traceability. Based on these grounds, the scope of this paper is to assess Halal food sustainability, examining the barriers and opportunities offered by the certification and blockchain tools. To this purpose, the authors carried out an integrative literature review, selecting 54 contributions in the Web of Science platform. Despite several limitations, such as the lack of a standardized framework or universally accepted and reliable certifying authorities, the implementation of blockchain technology has emerged as an interesting instrument to increase the trustworthiness and traceability of Halal foods. This tool could also help the development of protocols and standard procedures, ensuring h...
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Purpose The hospitality industry is responsible for significant amounts of waste, more than one-t... more Purpose The hospitality industry is responsible for significant amounts of waste, more than one-third of which is food waste. Through the comparison between an Italian and a Romanian hotel, this paper aims to provide a better understanding of food waste management trends in the hotel industry as well as to highlight hotel kitchens and hotel food services weaknesses and opportunities to minimize food waste. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews, personal communication and observations were conducted to investigate food service planning, food procurement and food waste management, as well as to better comprehend current individuals’ understanding and attitudes, infrastructures, legislative culture and opportunities either from the managerial and the employees’ perspective. Data were analyzed according to a content analysis approach. Findings Three critical hot spots emerged from the analysis: prediction and check of guests’ attendance, communication and transparency with loc...
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