Drivers of food waste generation and best practice towards sustainable food waste management in the hotel sector: a systematic review

Kasavan, Saraswathy; Siron, Rusinah; Yusoff, Sumiani; Fakri, Mohd Fadhli Rahmat

Drivers of food waste generation and best practice towards sustainable food waste management in the hotel sector: a systematic review

2022

Kasavan, Saraswathy | Siron, Rusinah | Yusoff, Sumiani | Fakri, Mohd Fadhli Rahmat

The growing volumes of food globally are lost or wasted along the entire food chain. However, a high effort in investigating why food waste (FW) occurs remains scattered for each subsector in detail, particularly in the hotel sector. Therefore, this systematic review focuses on FW issues in the hotel sector to identify FW generation drivers and good business practices towards mitigating FW. The review compiled literature from 25 related studies and adopted the PRISMA statement, utilising two leading journal databases: Scopus and Web of Science. This review shows that hoteliers initially feel guilty about wasting food, primarily based on financial loss rather than concerns about the social and environmental footprint. Based on the review, hotel staff from various internal departments faced conflicts between good intentions with reducing FW and the guests’ unsustainable food consumption patterns. Within the scope of this review, we suggest that further research is necessary with a focus on procedures and regulations (hotel policy) to encourage guests to minimise plate waste and redistribute unsold hotel food to charities or food banks. Overall, this review offers some interesting guidelines and actionable inferences to reduce FW generation in the hotel sector.

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