Food waste and its causes in higher education cafeterias and canteens: an exploratory study in the province of Santiago (Chile)

Food waste (FW) is the decrease in the mass of edible food during retail, food service, and final consumption. In recent years, research related to this topic has spread. However, there are still few references about food waste in the service sector in developing countries, which is a concern for three reasons: first, due to the overgrew of food consumption out of the home before the COVID-19 pandemic; secondly, due to the interest in carrying out this research at the local level avoiding regional or global generalizations and, finally for the nutritional implications derived from this research. With this background, this paper fills this gap and aims to evaluate food waste in the service sector, concretely in higher education cafeterias and canteens (HECC). Our specific objectives include obtaining information on the causes of FW in HECC in Santiago (Chile) using approximation methods that are better suited to the purposes of this paper. The study employed the qualitative research paradigm to analyze primary data and comprises a structured questionnaire survey and a qualitative semi-structured interview of HECC managers. Non-probabilistic sampling was used as a convenience sampling technique to select the HECC to be surveyed (n = 17). The results show a total FW by year comprised 309 tons of FW generated in the higher education canteens surveyed and 115 tons generated in the higher education cafeterias surveyed, representing 425 tons of FW annually. Divided by the total FW by the working days of HECC, the average FW generated daily is 1381 kg, corresponding to 1005 kg per day in higher education canteens and 376 kg per day in higher education cafeterias.