Food banks in middle- and high-income countries redistribute surplus food to food-insecure individuals, facing supply chain uncertainties.

The work done in Living Lab 7, Efficient Food Bank Networks, has led to this article about an optimization model, inspired by Dutch food banks, which helps allocate investment budgets to maximize the number of beneficiaries by addressing transport, storage, and donation shortages.

Applying this model with real-life data from The Netherlands showed a 32% increase in beneficiaries served, and the Dutch food banks have implemented these findings. 

The work in Living Lab 7 has also led to this article about food banks' role in combating food insecurity and waste, highlighting supply chain challenges such as managing voluntary labor, perishable products, and limited IT infrastructure.

It reviews existing literature and identifies gaps, calling for interdisciplinary research to address interdependent challenges in supply, demand, and their matching.

The work done in WP2 of the ZeroW project has led to this article written by ZeroW partner TNO in collaboration with Fraunhofer AISEC about enabling contract data processors in dataspaces to execute data requests on behalf of their partners using an on-behalf-of actor model with verifiable credentials.

This model, demonstrated through a use case and detailed sequence diagram, extends existing dataspaces to cover more complex real-world applications.

The paper presents a comprehensive overview of challenges for establishing the agricultural data ecosystem and proposes design principles to address them during the implementation of an agricultural data space. 

ZeroW was acknowledged as funding the paper, as the results were obtained directly from our project activities in Living Lab 1.

Organization work in Living Lab 9, Informing and nudging consumers, has led to the publication of a research paper titled "Optimizing household food waste: The impact of Meal Planning, package sizes, and Performance Indicators". 

This study shows how careful weekly meal planning can help reduce household waste and diet's carbon footprint.

This chapter based on results from the ZeroW project was included in the book series Springer Series in Supply Chain Management.

Food supply chains face significant sustainability challenges due to the high levels of food loss and waste (FLW), impacting both the environment and food security.

This chapter explores FLW drivers across different supply chain stages and discusses strategies to mitigate FLW, such as surplus food redistribution and novel processing technologies. These strategies present both challenges and opportunities for enhancing sustainable supply chain management.