Might a platform-based business model be used in the food industry to reduce waste and improve sustainability? That’s the question a research team from Finland sets out to answer in the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management.
Globally, one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, amounting to about 1.3 billion tonnes per year. Given that food waste also equates to wasted water, lost energy, and needless carbon emissions, and pollution. Indeed, the carbon footprint of food waste is about 4.4 million tones of carbon dioxide equivalent each year, which is almost as much as road transport emissions. We must find ways to drastically reduce this figure. Seemingly, it is consumers that contribute to the larger proportion of wasted food rather than it occurring on the side of production, transport, and retail. However, little information is available about food waste from restaurants, cafés, and canteens, and the catering and accommodation services, this alone could also be generating millions of tonnes of food waste.
Malla Mattila, Nina Mesiranta, and Anna Heikkinen of the Faculty of Management and Business at Tampere University explain how food waste is a growing challenge for companies in the food services sector hoping to improve their sustainability credentials. They have examined the research literature in the realm of business sustainability in the developed world and looked at sustainable business models and digital platforms, that might provide guidance for such companies. They specifically scrutinize two real-life business cases that provide digital services and show how they help food service companies to reduce their food waste. The benefits of sustainable business models are wrought in their scalability and attractiveness the team points out.
While the consumer side seems to be the bigger problem, supermarkets and other outlets generate vast tonnages of waste as products pass their “sell-by” dates. As such, there is a wide open niche for mobile device applications that connect consumers to products that are about to expire in a more effective way so that such stock might be purchased rather than it going to waste. However, applications at every step from farm and factory to retail to outlet or home could reduce waste, the research suggests.
Mattila, M., Mesiranta, N. and Heikkinen, A. (2020) ‘Platform-based sustainable business models: reducing food waste in food services’, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Vol. 24, Nos. 4/5, pp.249–265.