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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets
Volume 8 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1455756

Food waste and its associated environmental impacts of workplace buffet-style canteens in Beijing, China

Provisionally accepted
Dan Zhang Dan Zhang 1*Panpan Zhang Panpan Zhang 2Li Xue Li Xue 3,4Liang Wu Liang Wu 1
  • 1 Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China
  • 2 School of Economics and Trade, Henan University of Technology, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
  • 3 College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 4 Academy of Global Food Economics and Policy, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Food waste is regarded as a serious global issue due to its adverse impacts on food security, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and human well-being. More attentionhas been paid to this problem in the food service sector. However, limited studies focused on food waste in workplace canteens, especially in workplace buffet-style canteens. We analyzed 656 weighted samples from four buffet-style canteens to investigate food waste and its associated environmental impacts. Our findings revealed that the average daily food waste per person is 158.4 g; specifically, food waste at the lunchtime was 78.8 g per capita, approximately 2.8 times greater than breakfast and 1.5 times higher than dinner. Significant differences were found in the composition of food waste at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, due to the varied dietary cultures and health considerations. Vegetables contributed the largest share of food waste for all three meals, and more livestock food waste was observed at lunch and dinner. The self-run workplace buffet-style canteen had significantly lower food waste than the outsourced canteens for all three meals, while food types and cuisine styles had significantly influenced food waste. Additionally, our research demonstrated that food waste could bring in some environmental issues, considering its ecological, water, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus footprints. Moreover, less than 30% of livestock food waste contributed to more than 60% of environmental footprints. The results highlighted that some economic measures could be one of the important strategies for reducing food waste in workplace buffet-style canteens.

    Keywords: Food waste, Workplace, buffet-style, canteens, Environmental Impacts

    Received: 27 Jun 2024; Accepted: 11 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zhang, Zhang, Xue and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Dan Zhang, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.