Perishable food products generate significant waste and consume a high amount of energy due to quality and safety maintenance requirements, stressing supply chains and highlighting the need to improve their efficiency and environmental sustainability. Integrating the life cycle perspective in the fresh foods supply chains can provide valuable insights for developing and improving an environmental sustainability strategy, allowing businesses to optimize processes and make informed decisions to reduce the overall impact of their products.Understanding the life cycle's environmental implications can influence the sourcing of raw materials, production processes, transportation methods and disposal decisions, addressing the need to adopt a holistic approach that encompasses the entire supply chain from cultivation to consumption.By analyzing 40 different studies, this research explores how each actor in the fresh food supply chain can reduce its environmental impact. It also reveals the environmental concerns created by perishable products and it identifies strategic solutions to avoid the displacement of environmental burdens within intra- and inter-organizational supply chain. The solutions proposed focus mainly on cultivation, materials for packaging, product transportation and storage and waste management. These practices can be translated into three dimensions: technological, operational and management and range from individualized (can be put in place at a function and/or organization level) to highly interconnected (can be applied only through cooperation with other parties along the supply chain).
