Environmental assessment on daily operations of café at Kota Bharu district: article

Food loss can occur along the way of the whole food supply chain. Apart it is not acceptable from an ethical point of view, food losses can create negative impacts towards economy and environment as well. Globally, food service industry is the third biggest providers to food waste, right behind household and agricultural sector. Café house as one of sub-provision of food service sector are growing worldwide and currently become a trend among Malaysians. Thus, this study was intended to explore the environmental assessment on daily operation of the café houses. Five cafés with same criteria requirement were selected to get a reliable data regarding food wastes within the sector. The waste from five selected cafés was classified into three categories which are preparation loss (PREP), serving loss (SERV) and customers’ plate loss (PLATE). Three bins were provided and labelled to differentiate the loss categories. Next, carbon and water footprint were developed using specific formula. All the data were measured continuously for a period of 7 days. Material Flow Analysis was used to visualize the flow of material from the cafes’ operation. The study found out that the PLATE waste showed almost doubled fraction (13%) of the PREP waste (7%). 969 kWh average of electricity consumption was recorded from the five selected cafes, which produce approximately 103.93 kgCO2e of carbon footprint. Average total water consumptions from the five cafes were 24.4m³ that can cause about 8.39 kgCO2e of carbon footprint. This study help café management to recognize the areas for improvement on reducing food waste generation.