Environmental assessment on daily operations of Thai food restaurants at Kota Bharu district: article

Food losses occur across the whole food supply chain comprising the final stage that pose negative environmental impacts due to the emissions of GHG including carbon dioxide and the use of drinking water. The rising in number of food industry including restaurants lead in increasing of waste generated as this sector produces high amount of food waste compared to households. Thus, this study was conducted to evaluate the environmental assessment on daily operation of Thai food restaurants. Since restaurants is the place where food is served, consumed and wasted, it confer an ideal scenario to study food systems at consumer level. In order to get more reliable and detailed data of food losses in this sector, the food waste generated from 5 selected Thai food restaurants with the same criteria selection were classified into three categories (preparation losses, serving losses and plate waste) and measured for a period of one-week. Three separate bins were made available for Thai food restaurants selected for the collection of food waste generated. The weighing of food waste according three categories of losses were carried out onsite by using weighing scale and the data was recorded. Then, the Material Flow Analysis (MFA) was performed to determine the amounts of food waste generated in the form of diagrams and the factors contributed most significantly to these amount. The findings presented that customers’ plate waste contributed to most of the food waste which is 11.29 % in total waste on daily operations of Thai food restaurants compared to preparation loss that generated only 6.88 % of food waste. The highest in daily average number of food waste generated was on weekends compared to other days for both preparation losses and plate waste that attributed 8.32 kg and 12.60 kg respectively. The high amount of energy consumption on weekend had contributed to the huge total carbon emissions in this study that were recorded for 9.87 kg CO2 and 11. 421 kg CO2 respectively. The water consumption during weekend also revealed the highest contributor to the total carbon footprint emissions, which was accounted to 2.6 m³ of water consumption and emitted up to 0.89 kg CO2 which is 24.52% of the total emissions. Thus, the measure such as improving the energy and water use and food waste from restaurants’ operation can ensure operating emissions is lower and more efficient.