یک مطالعه اکتشافی از رویکردهای مدیریتی برای کاهش تلفات مواد غذایی
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Literature review
3- Research design
4- Findings and discussion
5- Conclusions
References
Abstract
The hospitality industry generates substantial amounts of food waste. Although the issue has been politically recognised, it remains under-researched. Studies are limited in number and restricted in sectoral and geographical coverage. They have attempted to quantify and characterise food waste in hospitality ventures while the managerial approaches to its reduction have not been scrutinised. The coffee shop sub-sector of the hospitality industry has been entirely excluded from analysis. This study examined food waste in UK coffee shops through the managerial lens. While food waste represents a significant challenge, the managerial approaches to its minimisation are conservative and focus on disposal, rather than prevention. Lack of governmental support, imperfect legislation, irresponsible consumer behaviour and restricted internal resources inhibit application of more advanced managerial approaches. To enhance the effectiveness of food waste management within the sub-sector, targeted policy interventions designed to strengthen corporate commitments and facilitate pro-environmental changes in consumer behaviour are necessary.
Introduction
Food waste is a major issue which is related to a set of further global environmental and socio-economic challenges (Segrè et al., 2014). Although there are substantial geographical and sectoral variations in its distribution, food waste is equally pronounced in developed and emerging economies, which underlines the political importance and highlights the urgency of its mitigation (Hodges et al., 2010). Despite the efforts undertaken to-date to combat food waste, the issue persists and calls for better scientific understanding, enhanced public recognition and reinforced political attention (WRAP, 2017). Hospitality food waste represents an issue of particular concern (Pirani and Arafat, 2014). With its share of 12%, the hospitality industry is the third largest food waste generator in Europe, after households and food manufacturing and processing enterprises (FUSIONS, 2016). In the UK, hospitality businesses generate circa 0.9 million tonnes of food waste annually, which translates into 10% of the national food waste stream (WRAP, 2017). The issue is likely to intensify as the frequency of dining out is rising in both developed and emerging economies, implying growing demand for food (Mintel, 2016a). Importantly, up to 80% of UK hospitality food waste is avoidable (WRAP, 2017), but the issue occurs due to the deficiencies in business operations, poor managerial practices and reckless consumer behaviour (Engström and Carlsson-Kanyama, 2004). In the absence of effective prevention and mitigation measures, the future hospitality industry is likely to generate substantial amounts of food waste, thus hampering its quest towards sustainability (Betz et al., 2015). Despite its global importance, the issue of hospitality food waste remains under-researched (Papargyropoulou et al., 2016; Pirani and Arafat, 2016; Radwan et al., 2010). Although the number of studies that have set to address this issue has recently been growing (see, for instance, Charlebois et al., 2015; Heikkilä et al., 2016), both the scope and the scale of their analysis remain limited (Kim et al., 2017; Myung et al., 2012).