The Efficacy of Food Waste Reduction Strategies in an African Frontier Market Food Services Industry

There is an exponential increase in environmental littering, mostly from solid waste such as plate waste. Several public health officials are developing numerous policy interventions to dispose of sustainably and reduce and, where possible, avoid plate waste. The study sought to determine the contribution of various meal components to plate waste and assess the efficacy of various plate waste reduction intervention strategies in Zimbabwe, a typical Southern Africa frontier market. Using 400 transactions analysed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), an experimental study of the three invention strategies: portion size reduction, price-per-weight, and meal variety were conducted in various cafeteria systems. A preliminary study was conducted to determine the highest contributor of plate waste. The results also revealed significant differences in plate waste of various meal components, with starch being wasted more, followed by vegetables and meat. The results indicated that all the interventions had a statistically significant effect on reducing plate waste. Also, there is equal efficacy among the three studied plate waste reduction interventions in the food-services industry. Implications and recommendations were proffered.