A multi-stakeholder partnership to fight food waste in the hospitality industry: a contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 12 and 17

Abstract

One of society’s greatest challenges, reflected in United Nations Sustainable Development, is the issue of food waste. To address this, the hospitality industry must develop and implement multifaceted solutions from a range of stakeholders in the food supply chain. The paper describes a multi-stakeholder partnership set up to help the Dutch hospitality industry reduce food waste by means of a “Food Waste Challenge”. It reports findings from the challenge’s first edition, a large-scale field experiment with 172 participating restaurants, showing that after implementing a range of behavioural interventions, food waste decreased by 21% on average at participating restaurants with complete measurements. This research builds on scarce literature on multi-stakeholder partnerships and “green” behavioural interventions in tourism in order to battle societal problems such as food waste and thereby contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 12 and 17 and build a more sustainable hospitality industry.

Keywords:

• SDGs
• multi-stakeholder partnerships
• sustainable hospitality
• food waste
• behavioural interventions
• nudges

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges and is grateful to all the partners involved in the multi-stakeholder partnership who made the Food Waste Challenge happen. This includes the students from Hotelschool The Hague and in particular Toscha de Wit, Milou Dankers, Megan Lawrence, Shelly Knegt and Ben Vienings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For example, WRAP in the United Kingdom, “Verspilling is Verrukkelijk” in the Netherlands, ReFed in the USA, Love Food Hate Waste in the UK, New Zealand, and Canada.

2 For example, food waste reduction applications like Too Good To Go (TGTO), provide restaurants and supermarkets with a solution to sell their surplus food (instead of throwing it away) in for example a “Magic Box” from TGTG. While the consumer can buy the box for a 50%–70% discount, a further devaluation of food in the mind of consumers is neither a sustainable solution for the seller or for society in the long run. Adherence to national nutrition guidelines might also be questioned if the “Magic Box” is, for example, filled with surplus muffins and cakes. For a food waste reduction partner like the Netherlands Nutrition Center, this solution might therefore not meet their needs.

3 To reduce food waste by 50% at a retail and consumer level by 2030.

4 The name remains anonymous here for review purposes.

5 Calculations by Rabobank presented at HORECAVA accounting for that 1 kg food waste is worth €10.07.

6 To illustrate, among the three key partners, Rabobank, as a financial institution, benefitted from the necessary operational and research expertise from the other partners (e.g. weighing the waste, types of waste, kitchen staff food waste behaviours, changing behaviour). Wastewatchers as a start-up technology company, profited from a large corporate network to recruit participants, the PR activities as well as manpower and knowledge exchange with the academic partner. The hotel management university gained access to real-life cases and the possibility for research and education to make a direct and actionable contribution to the UN SDGs.

7 Due to COVID-19 seriously affecting the restaurant industry, it is not confirmed that it will go ahead.

8 It was stopped because of COVID-19.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna de Visser-Amundson

Anna de Visser-Amundson is a Research Fellow in Marketing at Hotelschool The Hague (HTH). She is also a Doctorate Candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, School of Business & Economics. She studies ‘nudging’ as an effective strategy to reduce food waste in hospitality organisations. Her work on this topic secured HTH as a key partner in a national Food Waste Challenge. She also explores the marketing of ‘rescued-based’ food as a scalable solution to the food waste problem where she particularly looks at how different product cues (e.g., product presentation) influence consumer preferences for this type of food.