Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The activities related to food production, processing, handling, transportation, storage and disposal of food products have an important impact on sustainability. Hence, people’s food choices also contribute for the definition of the extension of this impact and therefore this work aimed at studying some motivations that influence people’s eating habits. This was an observational, cross-sectional study, undertaken on a non-probabilistic sample of 11960 participants form 16 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Romania, United States of America). The survey was undertaken by means of a questionnaire of self-response, applied only to adult citizens. The results obtained indicated that a great number of participants admit to shape their food choices according to some environmental concerns, like, for example, they prefer foods from the season or those that comply with sustainable processing and packaging. Regarding the food surplus, this seems a priority to avoid at home, but not so much when it comes to restaurants. Factor analysis indicated two types of concerns: Purely Environmental Concerns (PEC) and Sustainability allied to Quality Concerns (SQC), and cluster analysis showed that 54% of the participants tend to make their food choices considering both types of concerns, which is very expressive and positive towards sustainability of the food chain.

Plastic bags are unusually comfortable solution for consumers (particularly if are free of charge) and constitute a sort of sign of time. However, they are also an enormous environmental challenge, because they become waste after a very short life cycle. In the world this problem had already been noticed some time ago and many states took action being aimed at limiting the use of disposable plastic carrier bags. In 2018 Poland, forced by notations of the EU directive, was also included in the group of these states. This article was devoted to discussion about a solution accepted in Poland and its contribution to the accomplishment of the concept of sustainable development. As the result of the study it can be stated that it is possible to limit the consumption of disposable plastic bags in Poland, however another fear is a fact that the first signals of the leakiness of the system and the possibility of avoiding the recycling fee already appeared.