Efforts to combat food waste in university canteens have generally focused on what students leave on their plates. A study in the International Journal of Environment and Waste Management turns the tables on campus catering and suggests that there are opportunities for saving server-side too.
Food waste is more than a logistical inconvenience, explain Boineelo Pearl Lefadola, Annemarie Viljoen, and Gerrie du Rand of University of Pretoria in South Africa. It is a growing problem feeding into climate change, resource depletion, and falling global food security. Unfortunately, many interventions in institutional settings remain reactive rather than proactive and tend to home in on the plate-scraping after the dining session is over rather than looking at improving efficiency in the kitchen and behind the serving hatch.
The team recommends a systems approach that puts every aspect of food service on the efficiency menu. For starters, they consider ingredient procurement, the mains of storage, preparation, service, and the just desserts of food waste disposal. Systems theory cooks up the idea that inefficiencies or failures at any stage can ripple through to the next course, fattening up the waste bins. The team looked at the data, talked to staff, focus groups, and made first-hand observations within a university’s food service operation.
Their findings reveal that setting a place for a series of coordinated practices can significantly reduce waste. Improving various aspects of a canteen’s operations can improve efficiency and reduce food waste from automated inventory that forecasts and aligns supply and demand, strict adherence to food quality and storage protocols, careful portioning based on consistent recipes, and tight controls on timing and temperature during preparation and service, can all help. Carrying out routine meal audits further help staff identify and address sources of excess and so waste. Combining all these ingredients offers a tasty recipe for change, the research suggests.
Lefadola, B.P., Viljoen, A. and du Rand, G. (2025) ‘Tackling food waste in a university food service operation: a case study’, Int. J. Environment and Waste Management, Vol. 36, No. 5, pp.1–14.