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