A Study on Food Wastage by Restaurants, Households & Effective Strategies for Food Waste Management

Abstract

Food wastage is the growing problem which is quite unseen and ignored in most parts of our country. It can be said that a very handful of population know its relevance and its hazardous effects on our society. Globally, it is estimated that about 1/3^rd of food is wasted and hence it becomes compelling in addressing this travesty. The research provides a systematic review of the inevitable nature of food wastage, understanding and interpreting the consumer’s psychology behind leftover foods by conducting surveys and getting insights from restaurants with their food management techniques. The analysis and statistics of our research is based on the suburbs of Thane and Mulund. According to the survey conducted, majority of consumers waste food because of the excessive quantity or food which is stored in refrigerators for prolonged periods of time and later becomes stale. On the other hand, our survey of restaurants shows that many of them redistribute the surplus amount of food among their employees and sometimes they simply dispose food carelessly which drives us to conduct research and our moto is to mitigate the prevalence of food wastage and help alleviate the hunger among the needy. This study presents a recommended model for food waste management.