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The solution to American Restaurant Food Wastage Problem
Food wastage, which is the throwing away of items that are fit for human consumption that end up in landfills, is a significant problem in the USA than any other country. America is a global leader in food wastage, accounts for 22% of the municipal solid waste (MSW) of the total waste in the landfills comprising of up to 80 billion pounds of foods which equate to more than $161 billion, making almost 30-40% of trash out of the total food supply. The restaurants` food waste accounts for 15% of the country’s entire food waste which affects the country and the world in many ways through cost and significantly increasing the greenhouse effects due to the amounts of methane gas produced by the food waste. Due to the environmental impact and the food security problem, there is need for the restaurants` food waste problem solutions through innovative and better ways in management and control of the recycling and reuse strategies.
Most of the research done attributes the problem of restaurants’ food wastage in the country to cheaper foods that have changed the individuals’ consumption culture. Therefore, the government and community need to get involved in undertaking various significant interventions to the problem. Similarly, the increase in the magnitude of the problem according to substantial research undertaken on the country’s problem is due to a lack of policy implementation and understanding of the public and stakeholders on various matters and practices concerning the preservation, storage, and handling of food substances. Therefore, the immense problem depends on a multidisciplinary and holistic approach involving the government and the community on the use of various recycling, recovery, and preventative measures by training personnel and restaurant staff and public awareness and education in changing restaurant food’s cultural levels consumers. Similarly, there is a need to effectively implement the policies and regulations in maintaining health hygiene and physical facility maintenance.
To significantly address food wastage from restaurants and the public, the implementation of a multidisciplinary and holistic approach by both the government and the community through the training of restaurant personnel and public awareness helps improve food efficiency by enhancing the recycling, recovery, and preventative measures. According to Starr & Nicolson, education level concerning recycling efforts and strategies are essential to the success of the recycling methods and policies guiding the restaurants to reduce the rates of food wastage from restaurants. Through the Obama administration, the government started a public-private initiative in addressing the food wastage problem in the country, targeting to reduce the number of calories America’s waste annually by the year 2030 (Chandler). However, to effectively achieve the initiative’s goal, it is essential to address the underlying causes and factors to the increase in restaurant food wastage in the country.
Training of the restaurant personnel and public awareness regarding food wastage and the best practices to effectively address the problem and reduce the environmental impacts and health complications help conclusively address the problem and help strengthen the existing policies and measures. Food wastage from the restaurants happens due to the restaurant staff and managers misinterpreting the food storage and handling instructions. Also, the problem of restaurants’ food wastage is attributed to the consumers of packed and restaurants food failure to finish their meal due to the lack of specification of the quantity they can comfortably finish. The problem caused by the customers is significantly because of the cheap and easy to access food from the restaurants which has significantly changed the consumer’s behavior towards restaurants foods and the culture of consumption patterns towards restaurants’ foods. Therefore to address the food wastage problem, the measures implemented must ensure that they change the human behavior and habits contributing to the restaurant’s food wastage through adequate and effective public awareness in creating education on the significant issues to the public and the stakeholders involved.
Since food in America is plenty and cheap compared to other countries, the restaurant personnel and the consumers of restaurant food have changed their behavior and habits that contribute to the culture of not appreciating and valuing food (RTS). This change of culture results in 80% of restaurants’ food wastage from discarded consumable food. Though several states such as California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, among others, have laws towards curbing food wastage. Without the education and training needed for all the stakeholders involved in causing restaurants food wastage, their efforts would never become sustainable in reducing or eliminating the enormous amount of food wastage in the landfills.
According to Kwon et al. study on the inspection of ethnic and non-ethnic restaurants whereby more ethnic restaurants received awful inspection scores, there is a need to offer food safety training for the restaurant employees. Food safety training for the restaurant employees helps address the problem by reducing the violations of food temperatures and storage time. Restaurants’ food wastage results from the breach of the hygiene and physical facility maintenance of the premises and its employees, making the handling of food by following the safety frameworks difficult that end up contaminating the food and the produce leading to food wastage. Training of the employees increases their knowledge and understanding of the food code and its significant implications when violated.
Similarly, a significant amount of the restaurants’ food wastage results from the misinterpretation of the expiring dates and the labels in the foods containing important information relating to their handling and storage. Misunderstanding of the labels such as “sell by”, “expires on”, “use by,” and “best before” bring confusion to the restaurants’ staffs, which make food suitable for consumption being thrown away (RTS). The misunderstanding is brought about by the restaurants’ significant need to avoid the implications from the risk of potential foodborne illness to their consumers from contaminated food. In reaction and bringing intervention to the wastage of food resulting from misunderstanding and the misinterpretation of the expiration dates labels on the food and products that the restaurants use. countries such as Germany and France have resulted in policies that reform the products’ expirations dates to reduce the food wastage problem in their countries (Chandler). However, even with the policies in reforming the expiration dates, Americans need a holistic approach with the use of training and education to the restaurants to enhance their knowledge and skills in handling the foods and interpreting the expiration dates. Training the staff and offering adequate essential and useful education provides them with the necessary skills and knowledge to reform the expiration dates. Therefore to avoid having mere policies that are not implemented or not followed, there is a need to offer training and education to the restaurant management and their staff regarding the issues and problems that the intended policies seek to address.
Food wastage from restaurants in America increases due to consumers’ changing lifestyles in aesthetic foods and busy lifestyles. Individuals and especially the young generation, become busier and cannot cook for themselves thus preferring take-outs and eat outs. The social lifestyles and economic changes have changed the consumption cultures in the country significantly leading to emergence of more restaurants in the country. The problem greatly increases during holidays as many people spend more times exploring diverse cultures that contributes to the problem with much tons of food becoming wasted around these periods. With the increasing cultural diversity in the country leading to lack of appreciation of the abundance and cheap food due to the growth in consumers’ needs and requirements for quality aesthetic food impacts the implementation of various policies to reduce and prevent food wastage, making recycling intervention difficult. This is because the consumers are not brought on board on the importance of recycling and preventing food wastage given the environmental and economic impacts to the society and the governments in mitigating and controlling the effects of the problem. Therefore, the importance of education proliferation in the consumers and the community becomes recognized by changing consumers’ behaviors and preferences. This leads to an increase in restaurants’ food wastage and significantly contributes to achieving the EPA goals and objectives of reducing food wastage in the country for the duration they have set to ultimately achieve sustainable management of the problem through the significant interventions.
Training and education for both the restaurant staff and the consumer much help sustain the recovery programs’ management for solving food wastage. Restaurants’ failure to understand their consumer’s consumption trends leads them to buy excess food required that eventually ends up getting spoilt and thrown away. In contrast, the consumers’ impulse buying culture leads to purchasing food that they do not necessarily need and end up increasing the number of leftovers in their plates, which end up in the restaurants’ waste bins and eventually the municipal solid waste landfills. To significantly address the restaurant’s food wastage through sustainable management, the government undertakes various training and education through nutrition program strategies for both the community and the restaurant’s staff. It significantly changes the cultural behaviors and perceptions, increasing restaurants’ food wastage and general food wastage statistics. Through nutrition programs introduced in schools, students learn various steps involved in recycling and preserving the food. It impacts the students with the knowledge of how to consume their food concerning nutrition dietary that reduces the impulse buying behaviors since students buy the nourishment they require to avoid food wastage. Similarly, the introduction of nutrition training and education programs helps impact the culture of consumption in the country by ensuring that students are adequately equipped with the purchasing process of their food. To reduce the wastage caused by left overs in the restaurants by ordering the right amount, they can comfortably finish.
Conversely, the staff and restaurants managements require adequate and practical training and education regarding the reduction, recovery, and recycling strategies on restaurant foods. The nutrition program strategy offering training and education to the students adequately equips the restaurant staff and management with the relevant skills and knowledge on waste reduction (Folliard). The training programs offer the team and the administration a chance to needs and requirements for quality food from the customers by ensuring that they prepare the food and serve it to the customers to ensure that they accept it due to its failure to meet their quality requirements. Training and education to the staff help them understand the significant storage and production process that ensure that they reduce food wastage even before the customers consume it in the restaurants. It provides them with a chance to understand the requirements of different foods and their techniques in preparation. It is also critical to the restaurant staff and management to ensure that they provide and use the practical methods and services that meet the consumers’ needs and requirements. Ensuring that the reduction of restaurants’ food wastage is significant and enhances sustainable management of food wastage. It is critical to observe and obtain customers’ information and restructure the services to the customers’ uniqueness and specifications since restaurants contribute to the food wastage by providing many benefits to the customers. Therefore through training, the restaurant management and staff are equipped with the skills and knowledge to identify the required services and foods preferred to the customers by observing the trends and obtaining information regarding the possible areas they can change through the customer’s information and comments their services. These details help reduce restaurants’ food wastage by providing and serving a manageable menu, which helps avoid the preparation of foods that end up being wastage because the customers didn’t eat it. Also, it helps in specialization, offering unique and differentiated menus through which the customers enjoy and have a shortlist of items to choose from the menu. This significantly reduces the wastage of food from the preparation of food not consumed by the consumers and from the ordering of a lot of food from the consumers, which end up in the restaurants’ waste bins since they are leftovers.
Nevertheless, according to Mourad, it is essential to have a holistic and robust sustainability approach that incorporates all the elements involved and contributes to the restaurant’s food wastage to have a sustainable solution. Restaurants staff and the managers have different interests and needs from the consumers. Similarly, the government’s interests are also from the restaurant’s interests. Other restaurants have different interests, resulting in different strategies and frameworks for the sustainable management of the recovery, prevention, and recycling of food waste in restaurants. Due to these differing interests, the intervention measures are constituted within competing solutions, which adversely affect the implementation of sustainable management strategies on restaurants’ food wastage. Training and public awareness through education however, promotes effective communication through the actors bringing a standard solution and understanding of the problem, which reduces the conflicting interest and competing solutions. The corporation of the United States and France in the implementation of interventions in recycling, recovering, and preventing food wastage through the cooperation of countries and different actors helps in enhancing and establishing strong, sustainable interventions (Mourad). However, without training and public awareness, the corporations’ accomplishment leads to fewer results in reducing the food wastage problem.
Education levels enhanced through public awareness and training of the restaurants’ staff and community, as Starr and Nicolson attributed more to reducing the restaurants’ food wastage. By improving recycling success strategies, the enforcement of legal mandates as the sole driver in recycling, reduction, and prevention interventions in restaurants’ food wastage. Training and education help in sustainable and effective intervention to the restaurant wastage problem through enhancing the access to materials in undertaking and implementing the interventions in the restaurant facilities increasing the success rates of the different interventions and sustainable management strategies (Folliard). The use and introduction of training and education in food management strategies in schools through the nutrition strategy program significantly help achieve sustainable management. Through adopting a holistic approach that provides a dynamic framework that supports the different interventions through the change of behaviors and perceptions of the students in restaurant food services. It impacts the community by retaining the knowledge and practices they acquire in the school settings and restaurants scenario in changing consumers’ and staff’s overall culture and behaviors in the restaurants.
Besides, training and education to the customers, restaurant staff, and managers enhance their skills and knowledge on the different policies. However, the implementation and execution of training and education to prevent and reduce restaurants’ food wastage increases the actors’ innovation levels in coming up with different strategies in enhancing sustainable management and interventions to restaurants’ food wastage (Mourad). Restaurants enhance their strategies in providing the right amounts of foods by ensuring that they utilize the proper techniques in the production process and storage process of the food and farm products they use in preparing food for the consumers. Innovation enhanced through the nutrition program helps change the behaviors and perceptions of the consumers to different foods by enhancing their acknowledgment and appreciation of consuming the right amounts and balanced diet, which helps reduce food wastage. Restaurants significantly appreciate the various methods that strengthen preservation, recovery, and recycling of the food using innovative initiative from the staff and the important information collected through consumers’ feedback (Folliard). For instance, through innovation, restaurants appreciate the changes in the consumption trends and react accordingly by changing their packaging of the food and enforcing different policies regarding the need to reuse and recycle various healthy foods for consumption by the consumers.
Consequently, through training and education, interventions to the sustainable management of restaurants’ food wastage are significantly achieved. Training and education significantly equip substantially the restaurants by providing them with knowledge and skills that make them appreciate healthy hygiene and preserve their premises’ physical maintenance hygiene. These interventions ensure that the preservation and presentation of the food through the storage and production process meet the consumers’ quality requirements. It enhances food safety in the restaurants by providing the skills needed in providing effective storage and handling of the food in the restaurants to avoid contamination. It also helps bring on board all the actors in choosing relevant frameworks in sustainable solutions to prevention, recovery, and recycling of restaurants’ food wastage. Therefore, to effectively implement the intervention in restaurants, food wastage training, and education to the restaurant staff and consumers through public awareness is critical in achieving sustainable food waste management.
Works cited
Chandler, Adam. “Why Americans Lead The World In Food Waste.” The Atlantic, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/american-food-waste/491513/.
Folliard, Jennifer. “Food Waste In Schools And Strategies To Reduce It”. SDSU Extension, 2019, https://extension.sdstate.edu/food-waste-schools-and-strategies-reduce-it.
Kwon, Junehee, et al. “Food safety training needs assessment for independent ethnic restaurants: Review of health inspection data in Kansas.” Food Protection Trends 30.7 (2010): 412-421.
Mourad, Marie. “Recycling, recovering and preventing “food waste”: Competing solutions for food systems sustainability in the United States and France.” Journal of Cleaner Production 126 (2016): 461-477.
Royte, Elizabeth. “One-Third Of Food Is Lost Or Wasted: What Can Be Done.” Nationalgeographic.Com,2014,https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141013-Food-waste-national-security-environment-science-ngfood/.
RTS. “Food Waste In America In 2020: Statistics & Facts | RTS”. Recycle Track Systems, 2020, https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/.
Starr, Jared, and Craig Nicolson. “Patterns in trash: Factors driving municipal recycling in Massachusetts.” Resources, Conservation, and Recycling 99 (2015): 7-18.