Public catering has become increasingly important in recent years. With increasing annual customers, the sector's impact on the environment is also growing continuously. At the same time, public catering offers a lever to promote sustainable nutrition that has rarely been used so far. Small changes in kitchen practices and food offers can thus be multiplied into a significant positive impact on environmental challenges, such as climate change or loss of biodiversity due to the large number of servings. In contrast to private households, management decisions in public catering can influence the food-related environmental impact of thousands of customers. This article deals with the nationwide level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource use in the German public catering segment "business" and its saving potentials by different scenarios of unsupported and supported recipe revision. In this paper, we define "unsupported" as the intuitive optimization of recipes by employees of public catering businesses. In contrast, "supported" approaches had to meet specific target goals, for example of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung; engl. German Nutrition Society or the sustainable level. Specifically, we will test how (A) an unsupported recipe revision, (B) a recipe revision based on dietary recommendations and (C) a recipe revision using scientific guidance affect the environmental impact of a dish. As a methodological framework, an online survey of public catering companies was conducted as well as a scenario analysis at menu level and at nationwide level. The results are based on empirical data on the one hand, and on extrapolations on the other. The results show that the nationwide implementation of recipe revision according to scientific guidance-such as concrete target goals for the GHG emissions per serving-can save up to 44% of resource use in the German business catering sector (which corresponds to 3.4 million tons of resources per year) and as much as 40% of GHG emissions (0.6 million tons GHG emissions per year). Even in the scenario of unsupported recipe revision, GHG and resource savings of up to 20% can be realized. The results show that public catering can reduce its material and carbon footprint by 20% overnight. Moreover, the findings show indications for the sustainable transformation of public catering. Nevertheless, it must be noted that these are some first steps of the transformation, which will require further changes with even greater impacts and political activities.
Household food waste is determined by a complex set of routinized behaviors, and disruption of these routines may allow for a decrease in this vast amount of food waste. The current study examines such a disruption of household routines: the meal box. The potential of meal boxes to diminish different types of household food waste is investigated for the first time, across different countries. After providing a framework comparing the effects of different types of meals on food waste, we subsequently examine the effects of subscription-based food supply (i.e., meal boxes) on total meal waste as well as on the different types of food waste: preparation, cooking, and plate waste. Our dataset contains 8747 meal observations from 955 households in six countries. Results from a Bayesian multilevel hurdle-lognormal model with random intercept show that, overall, meal boxes reduce total meal waste in comparison to traditionally cooked dinners (38% reduction). Meal boxes especially lower the occurrence and amount of pan-and-pot food that is wasted (i.e., cooking waste), and also lower the amount of meal preparation waste, yet lead to a higher occurrence of both preparation and plate waste compared to traditional meals. This shows how differences between meals affect household food waste, something that has received little prior research attention. Furthermore, whereas most prior research has focused on overall household food waste, our study illustrates that distinguishing between different types of household food waste can provide important new insights.
Food production is responsible for approximately 17% of Germany's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. After retail, out-of-home catering is the second largest food sales channel in Germany. A variety of means on both the supply and demand side are necessary to stimulate, facilitate and encourage a more sustainable development and minimise GHG emissions in this sector. Nudges are one of these. This paper's focus lies on the demand side. Set in real-world laboratories, we use a standardised empirical approach to compare different nudging interventions belonging to the area of physical environment and consumers’ choice making process. We compare the effects of the same intervention across different settings and the effect of different, sequential nudging interventions in the same setting. Data was collected in eight workplace and school cafeterias in Germany over two project iterations (2016/2017; 2019/2020). A similar intervention design was applied. Comparability was assured by a harmonised menu. The first project iteration revealed that only one nudge (top menu position, +22.5%) led to significant increases in sustainable food choices, while results from the second iteration showed that all nudge interventions (best counter position, +11.6%; top menu position, +6,9%; label plus information, +15.9%) positively influenced consumer choice. Possible explanations such as the stricter compliance to the experimental design in the cafeterias but also societal developments such as the appearance of the Fridays for Future movement are discussed. As results vary between specific locations and settings, our findings suggest that nudges need to be adjusted to situational conditions for achieving highest efficacy.