Food waste generation in the hospitality and food service sector: Prevention insights from Malaysia

Food security is one of the greatest challenges the world faces today. Providing nutritious, safe and affordable food for all in a sustainable way will become even more challenging under the burden of increasing world population and global environmental change. Whist 795 million people are undernourished; one third of the food produced globally for human consumption is lost or wasted. The food waste – hunger paradox is an illustration firstly of the failing global food system, and secondly of the importance of food waste in the sustainability and food debates. Food waste represents substantial economic losses, has devastating environmental impacts, and moral and ethical implications in the face of food poverty.
Due to its detrimental economic, environmental and social impacts, food waste has received increasing attention in research and policy, viewed predominately from an engineering and technological perspective. In response, this research firstly critically reviewed contemporary conceptual frameworks and reframed food waste to produce the Food Waste Hierarchy. Secondly, it critiqued the current methodological approaches and developed a new framework to investigate the scale, origin, patterns and causes of food waste generation in the hospitality and food service sector in Malaysia. Finally, the research identified the most promising food waste prevention measures for the sector. These objectives were achieved by developing and applying a mixed methods interdisciplinary approach that linked the biophysical and economic flows of food provisioning and waste generation, with the social practices associated with food preparation and consumption. The food waste prevention insights that emerged from this research call for change in both the socio-technical systems and social practices related to food production and consumption; a message relevant to the food and broader sustainability research.