Impact of food waste campaigns
muted, but point toward right direction
Food waste can be problematic at
all-you-can-eat buffet-style restaurants or university dining halls for obvious
reasons: With little incentive to pile less food on their plate, diners tend to
overindulge.
One way to curb such behavior is a
food waste-reduction campaign, which serves as a low-cost solution for
promoting the virtues of moderation at the buffet line.
But according to new research co-written by a University of Illinois expert who studies consumer food choice and behavior, food waste-reduction campaigns in such settings, however well-intentioned, may have limited efficacy.
But according to new research co-written by a University of Illinois expert who studies consumer food choice and behavior, food waste-reduction campaigns in such settings, however well-intentioned, may have limited efficacy.
Research from Brenna
Ellison, a professor of agricultural and
consumer economics at Illinois, indicates that the impact of a food
waste-education campaign produced a modest, though not statistically
significant, reduction in the average waste per diner in an all-you-can-eat
dining setting.
“Food waste can be difficult to combat in all-you-care-to-eat settings like buffets and dining halls,” she said. “Education campaigns can be a low-cost way to make consumers aware of food waste, but they may have smaller impacts on waste behavior. For greater waste reduction, education campaigns may need to be combined with environmental changes such as removing the flat-fee pricing structure or pre-portioning food items.”
Ellison and her co-authors sought to
determine the efficacy of introducing a food waste-reduction campaign in a
university dining hall setting, as food waste is especially prevalent in
university dining facilities, which serve younger consumers who tend to be more
wasteful than the average adult.
“In general, the food service
industry generates an inordinate amount of food waste, and in
all-you-care-to-eat dining settings on a college campus, the problem is
exacerbated,” Ellison said.
The research took place at two
dining facilities on the U. of I.’s Urbana campus during the fall 2016
semester. Consumer plate waste was collected, sorted and weighed at the two
dining halls – a treatment site and a comparison site – to assess the impact of
an education campaign on the quantity and type of food waste.
“This study is unique in that diners
were not tracked,” Ellison said. “In other words, they didn’t know that their
waste was being monitored when they made their food choices, which means we
were more likely to observe diners’ natural eating behaviors.”
The education campaign consisted of
a series of pole-wrap posters placed in the student seating area of the
treatment site that contextualized the problem of food waste in the U.S.;
signage displayed at dining hall entry points and at multiple stations
throughout the serving area that tracked student plate waste at lunch; and
napkin inserts displayed throughout the student seating area.
The food waste-education campaign
had little impact on behavior. Before the campaign, the average student wasted
88 grams of food in the treatment dining facility – the equivalent of about one
chicken breast per student meal. After the campaign, the average student
decreased their food waste by a modest 3.45 grams, or a 3.9 percent reduction
in total food waste.
Although the finding is statistically
insignificant, for a dining facility that serves 10,000 students, the aggregate
reduction in waste during lunch each week (Monday-Friday) would be 76 pounds of
food – an amount that may be far from negligible for a food service operator,
Ellison said.
“This study also sorted plate waste
so we could determine which meal components – like protein or fruits and
vegetables – were wasted in greater volumes,” she said. “This is important to
food service operators who may be looking to estimate the financial impact of
food waste, as foods like meat proteins are likely more expensive than grains
and pastas.”
Although behavior was relatively
unaffected by the education campaign, the researchers observed improvements in
some student beliefs related to food waste in the dining halls.
“The campaign resulted in an
increased recognition that the dining halls were invested in reducing food
waste, and in an increased awareness that individual actions could make an
impact on the food waste problem,” Ellison said.
“The latter could be a signal that
students are moving from a state of pre-contemplation, where there is little
recognition that a behavior such as food waste is problematic, to a state of
contemplation, in which the problem is acknowledged and behavioral change is
considered.”
While consumer education has been
identified as a potentially useful tool in fighting food waste, the results
suggest that passive education alone is unlikely to be an effective
intervention strategy for reducing plate waste, particularly in an
all-you-can-eat dining environment.
“Given the setting of the current
study, this finding may not generalize to all consumer education efforts, but
it contributes to the broader discussion of how information impacts behavior,
which may be an important first step to achieving lasting behavioral change,”
Ellison said.
Ellison’s co-authors are Brittany
R.L. Duff and Cassandra J. Nikolaus of the University of Illinois; and Olesya
Savchenko of the University of Delaware.
The research was supported by the
National Institute of Food and Agriculture, an agency of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture; the University of Illinois Office of International Programs; and
the ADM Institute for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss.
The paper was published in the journal
Resources, Conservation & Recycling.