Food Waste in the Service Industry
The food service industry is a billion dollar industry with lots of money to spare. With millions of restaurants providing catering services daily, hotels giving breakfast buffets to their guests, and restaurants cycling through changing menus, the industry has an almost limitless supply of food coming in constantly. This makes the food service industry one of the biggest contributors to the global food waste problem.
“Word of mouth evidence is full of stories of restaurants spraying their food with paint to make sure their leftovers aren’t consumed for free. And many grocery stores insist that close to out-of-date food (which employees would happily take home) be shipped back to the warehouse to ensure correct stocktaking” (Marthinson, 2012, 57).
I was completely unaware of these practices until recently. It is a selfish game these people are playing and I feel that if this was publicized, we could stand a better chance at creating a more sustainable way of dealing with excess food in the service industry.
According to Marthinson’s book, “Prevention of Food Waste in Restaurants, Hotels, Canteens and Catering,” there are a number of possible solutions to the national food waste problem, some of them as simple as just reducing serving spoon sizes.
Becoming aware of the issue is one of the first steps at solving it. Marthinson suggests “awareness campaigns” for the public, as well as “training of staff and students both within the hospitality sector and among inspectors and National Food Administrations” (Marthinson, 2018, p. 104). As I said earlier, publicizing these horrors for the world to see would be very effective and I am a strong believer that educating people is the most important thing when trying to create change.
If being educated isn’t enough to stop people from preventing the avoidable waste of food, “taxes on waste generation” (Marthinson, 2018, p. 104) could urge more people to help the movement. I think that getting the government involved would help immensely, whether it be placing a tax on excess food or creating a ceiling on daily food production to prevent the inevitable waste of resources.
Another easy solution that would be very effective at combatting the food waste problem would be to donate any excess or close to out-of-date food to the homeless or less affluent areas of our communities. There are people going hungry all over the world and I’m sure so many people aren’t aware of that. If everyone helped out the hungry in their just own communities, we could make a significant difference in combatting this problem.
Marthinson, Jarle (2012). “Prevention of Food Waste in Restaurants, Hotels, Canteens and Catering” Retrieved March 7, 2021 from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/lib/buffalo/reader.action?docID=3383393
