Who cares about food waste? — A Stakeholder Analysis through Interviews
Food is thrown in the landfill by the ton daily. Consumers choose how to use their food and workers are still paid for it. Why does anyone care about food waste? Our team approached this question by talking to the people involved in the system of food waste creation.
Food Service
Our group talked to managers of food service businesses to discover their stake in food waste. Food service has an economic interest to maximize efficiency of food use; however, some cultural and economically-motivated practices generate avoidable food waste. Additionally, the treatment of unused food determines whether it is wasted or serves a secondary purpose.
First, James talked to Mike Brown, a manager of a Jet’s Pizza Franchise in Cincinnati, Ohio. He spoke about how waste management will only be a priority for the business if it is saving money. If preventing some waste is not saving a significant amount of money, then the restaurant is instructed to not do that practice. For example, while hastily creating food,, workers often waste food on the floor. The store is not allowed to use this food once dropped, so this is waste, but the haste of production and speedy service for the customers is more important. Additionally, when asked about how wasteful predictions and making food in advance is, Mike said that the process is actually very accurate at Jet’s. After several years of operation, managers understand what days are the most busy and how much they need to prepare to be ready for the rush. He did however explain that unexpected circumstances, such as Covid-19 for example, can make predictions very inaccurate as a result of the large change in customers. After a week of adaptation though, the restaurant was able to more easily predict food in advance. Finally, when asked about communicating with suppliers, Mike said that minimum purchase requirements for orders force the business to buy more than they need.
Next, Michael spoke to an anonymous manager at Masterpiece Chinese Restaurant in Duluth, Georgia. When asked about where she feels the most food was wasted at the restaurant, she primarily pointed to back-end mismanagement of supplies. An anecdote she mentioned would be a box of fresh vegetables that sat on the back-shelf for too long and expired before the chefs managed to use it. As for customer-side waste, she felt that most customers would take home any leftovers and thus there wasn’t a lot of plate waste at the restaurant. She felt that food losing freshness while in storage was primarily where food waste at the restaurant occurred.
Food Retail
Jeannie contacted Publix about their food waste policy. After emails, phone calls, and in-person conversations, she ended up with a general statement regarding their food recovery program with Feeding America. They exclude many types of meat, produce, seafood, and cultured products from this program because of their high bacterial counts. Furthermore, Publix works with “animal rescues and wildlife sanctuaries to donate perishable items for their animals whenever possible” (Publix).
In a second attempt to discover the food retail perspective, Jeannie and Michael spoke to Joe, a manager at Kroger Supermarket in Ponce de Leon, Atlanta, Georgia. Kroger has a zero hunger — zero waste initiative: their goal is to end world hunger by 2020. They implement cost relief methods, both markdowns on general products as well as markdowns on specifics, and donate three times a week to the local food bank and church to reduce food waste. Everything surplus is donated, with the exception of nonfrozen meats due to liability concerns. To keep track of the flow of food, Kroger has over-under reports that tell the manager what foods are in surplus or shortage. Typically, they always want to have a minimum of 1.5 days’ worth of supplies. However, the amount of food they have is dependent on what the warehouse provides. Ultimately, Joe believes that the problem is not wasting food itself, but rather the movement of food. He suggested a point of intervention, managing the supplies used by store employees, such as soap, pizza boxes, hairnets, masks, and disinfectants.
Food Bank
We also thought a food bank’s perspective on food waste would be useful and help us understand secondary food waste. As a result, Cynthia called Midwest Food Bank of Peachtree City, GA. In their opinion, the main contributors of food waste in general are ignorance about food dating, convenience, and regulatory requirements when it comes to food donations. For food banks, they believe that there is no food shortage problem; rather, there is a food distribution problem. Food banks sometimes get offered a truckload of fresh food that is located in a different state, and the food bank has to pay for trucking, which they may not have the funding for. There is also the problem of food storage, which has forced Midwest Food Bank to refuse truckloads of fresh frozen food in the past because of the lack of freezer space. In terms of donations, the Midwest Food Bank receives all kinds of food, including food with dented or torn containers that still contain fresh food but customers won’t buy, food close to its best by/sell by date, and food in packaging with old logos. For the most part, the food bank is able to donate everything they obtain because they have a wide range of clients. However, occasionally they receive donations that are hard to distribute, such as restaurant-sized gallon bags of sauce. Midwest Food Bank also emphasized that they strive to use as much food as possible, if they have any food that’s starting to rot or is unsafe for humans, they donate to local farmers to use as pig feed or compost.
Food Waste Research
The food system has many components and stakeholders. Many actors, but especially consumers, do not always have food waste in the forefront of their minds. So perhaps the most accurate analysis of their relationships to the issue comes from researchers. Dr. Christian Reynolds, a research fellow at City University-London, University of Sheffield, and University of South Australia, conversed with Charlie about his views on the topic. His background is in the economics and policies of the food supply chain as well as sustainable nutrition. Our interview focused on his investigation of the effectiveness of interventions targeting consumer food use. Dr. Reynolds has worked with the U.K. Waste Resource Action Programme to measure the effects of individual changes in practices, such as keeping refrigerators at a temperature that better preserves food.
Dr. Zhengxia Dou, Professor of Agricultural Systems, University of Pennsylvania, helped us explore food waste recovery options. Each part of the supply chain wants to maximize use of food to save money; however, food repurposing provides more, easier, and more profitable options closer to production. When producers have excess fresh peaches, they could sell them to a canning facility. When apples don’t meet quality standards for produce sales, processors could use it as pie filling or livestock feed. When food banks have leftovers that expire, the most useful purpose is composting or anaerobic decomposition.
Also, Dr. Dou has researched the changes in food waste due to covid-19. Generally speaking, the difficult situation has forced many consumers and business to be creative to save food. How much these changes in practices due to a short-term stake in the problem will become habits remains to be seen.
