Reducing spoilage in food aid shipments

23 January 2017

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) ships out food aid worth more than $1 billion every year. About 1% of that food is lost to spoilage and some within-nation food procurement suffers even higher losses.
A research project run by the MIT Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation (CITE) has been exploring a variety of alternative packaging materials and containers to see which work best, and most cost-effectively, at reducing the losses.
A range of shipments were tracked to determine the effectiveness of the packaging, and identified issues related to supply chains and handling processes along the way (News Item MIT, 6 January 2017).
Click here for the news item.
Click here for the first part of a research paper about the project.
Click here for the second part of a research paper about the project.
Click here for more information on the international workshop Fighting food waste with innovative packaging design (13th Annual Packaging Design & Innovation Summit, 16 March 2017 in Rome). NVC members receive a 20% discount.

This news item is also included in our monthly overview, the NVC Members-only Update. If you have any questions, please contact us: info@nvc.nl, +31-(0)182-512411.