Continuous monitoring of food loss and waste (FLW) is crucial for improving food security and mitigating climate change. By measuring quality parameters such as temperature and humidity, real-time sensors are technologies that can continuously monitor the quality of food and thereby help reduce FLW. While there is enough literature on sensors, there is still a lack of understanding on how, where and to what extent these sensors have been applied to monitor FLW. In this paper, a systematic review of 59 published studies focused on sensor technologies to reduce food waste in food supply chains was performed with a view to synthesising the experience and lessons learnt. This review examines two aspects of the field, namely, the type of IoT technologies applied and the characteristics of the supply chains in which it has been deployed. Supply chain characteristics according to the type of product, supply chain stage, and region were examined, while sensor technology explores the monitored parameters, communication protocols, data storage, and application layers. This article shows that, while due to their high perishability and short shelf lives, monitoring fruit and vegetables using a combination of temperature and humidity sensors is the most recurring goal of the research, there are many other applications and technologies being explored in the research space for the reduction of food waste. In addition, it was demonstrated that there is huge potential in the field, and that IoT technologies should be continually explored and applied to improve food production, management, transportation, and storage to support the cause of reducing FLW.

This paper describes a qualitative study aimed at understanding issues faced by retail firms when they start a project of implementing business analytics (BA) and understanding the impact of BA implementation on business performance. Our study is informed by prior literature and the theoretical perspectives of the Technology–Organisation–Environment (TOE) framework but is not constrained by this theory. Using case studies of nine retailers in the U.K, we have found support for the link between TOE elements and adoption. In addition, we have identified more interesting involvement of additional factors in ensuring how firms could maximise benefit derived from BA and traditional TOE factors that potentially could have additional impacts different from the ones. For example, there appears a link between adoption of BA and business performance (including performance in terms of environmental sustainability), and this link is moderated by the level of BA adoption, IT integration and trust.

There are approximately 88 million tonnes of food waste generated annually in the EU alone. Food spoilage during distribution accounts for some of this waste. To minimise this spoilage, it is of utmost importance to maintain the cold chain during the transportation of perishable foods such as meats, fruits, and vegetables. However, these products are often unfortunately wasted in large quantities when unpredictable failures occur in the refrigeration units of transport vehicles. This work proposes a real-time IoT anomaly detection system to detect equipment failures and provide decision support options to warehouse staff and delivery drivers, thus reducing potential food wastage. We developed a bespoke Internet of Things (IoT) solution for real-time product monitoring and alerting during cold chain transportation, which is based on the Digital Matter Eagle cellular data logger and two temperature probes. A visual dashboard was developed to allow logistics staff to perform monitoring, and business-defined temperature thresholds were used to develop a text and email decision support system, notifying relevant staff members if anomalies were detected. The IoT anomaly detection system was deployed with Musgrave Marketplace, Ireland’s largest grocery distributor, in three of their delivery vans operating in the greater Belfast area. Results show that the LTE-M cellular IoT system is power efficient and avoids sending false alerts due to the novel alerting system which was developed based on trip detection.

The nature of the relationship between environmental performance (EP) and firm performance (FP) of corporations is a long standing and contentious issue in the literature. This study is intended to advance this debate by arguing for the existence of curvilinear relationship and empirically testing the same using survey data on UK manufacturing firms. FP is captured in terms of growth in sales and market share. Our results show evidence for a quadratic relationship—as firms improve their EP, they seem to achieve much higher levels of FP. These results are consistent with the resource-based view of a firm; as firms engage in EP activities, they are able to gain inimitable knowledge that helps in further learning to further improve performance. Based on our results, we suggest that new studies focus on strategies to extend the period of increasing returns and maximizing the benefits of the positive association between EP and FP.

Food waste reduction, as a major application area of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data technologies, has become one of the most pressing issues. In recent years, there has been an unprecedented increase in food waste, which has had a negative impact on economic growth in many countries. Food waste has also caused serious environmental problems. Agricultural production, post-harvest handling, and storage, as well as food processing, distribution, and consumption, can all lead to food wastage. This wastage is primarily caused by inefficiencies in the food supply chain and a lack of information at each stage of the food cycle. In order to minimize such effects, the Internet of Things, big data-based systems, and various management models are used to reduce food waste in food supply chains. This paper provides a comprehensive review of IoT and big data-based food waste management models, algorithms, and technologies with the aim of improving resource efficiency and highlights the key challenges and opportunities for future research.