In Satakunta region, the Action Plan implementation is progressing steadily. The focus has been on the improved resource efficiency and resilience through life cycle assessment for food distribution systems. These systems in Satakunta do exist, but have been lacking coherency, which affects the both environmental, economic and social sustainability issues. Therefore, the Action Plan implementation period started to focus on options to tackle the coherency challenge.
Different organisations that deliver surplus foods from industries, caterings, restaurants and cafeterias to persons in need were gathered together on several workshops to share ideas, to collect existing information and to share views on how to improve the management of surplus food.
As was shown in LCA4Regions project Good Practises by Navarra and Lombardia regions, public authorities can consider food banks not only for the beneficial social impact, but also for their environmental and educational implications. The food bank system may be aligned with the climate change and waste prevention regional strategies, important policy targets also in Satakunta regional development.
For that goal, Satakunta has recently established its Programme for the Just Transition Fund (JTF) to reduce the negative impact of the climate transition, and to promote especially socioeconomic transition. Diversification of the regional economy according to intelligent specialization of Satakunta and measures promoting employment, training measures and development processes are to be started. Here life cycle management and life cycle thinking contribute a lot.
An operating food bank was visited in December 2022 to benchmark a national example. Tampere Food bank is established 1995 already. Tampere is not the only food bank in Finland any more, and related hubs exist today in Helsinki, Vantaa, and Oulu. In Tampere, food bank is a logistics and food delivery hub, but it possesses a market and a restaurant for excess food provided by all sorts of caterings. The strong experience of the City of Tampere provides further valuable information for Satakunta region. New projects to strengthen the food re-delivery systems via LCA methods are currently under preparation, and the better know-how obtained will boost the new projects and the sustainability goals of Satakunta region further.
