Deriving Objectives for Sustainable Food Waste Management: Analysis of Upstream Documents

Due to the high volume of their daily production, the optimal management of food waste is of special importance in all countries, especially from the environmental and health point of views. Because of its chemical and structural nature, this type of waste is easily decomposed and has a high potential to produce leachate and emit greenhouse gases, soil pollution, etc. in case of improper management. Due to the importance of the subject, the present study was carried out with the general aim of analyzing the content of the upstream documents at three national, regional and local levels in order to deduce the goals of the sustainable waste management system in Tehran. For this purpose, 15 upstream documents (5 national documents, 5 regional documents and 5 local documents) were selected as targeted and available samples for study. The selected documents were analyzed using the content analysis method of Gal et al. and the relevant concepts were extracted and coded. According to the results, the goals of sustainable food waste management in Tehran are presented in the form of five institutional (integration and inclusion of key elements of the urban waste management system), technical and infrastructural (optimizing existing processes in the use of technologies), environmental (minimizing adverse health and environmental effects), economic (financial sustainability) and cultural-social (attracting the maximum participation of citizens) categories. Finally, suggestions have been made to achieve each of the goals.