Jonathan William Ambrose (FoE/BIE1), Jorgin Tan Qi Wen (FoE/CVE1), Li Yi Min (FoS/SCI1), Loh Kieng Min (FASS/ARS1), Tan Yi Ting (FASS/ARS1)
Academic Advisor: Kah Wei | Student Fellow: Lim Boon Pin
The cost of food has been increasing annually and food wastage translates to higher costs for food suppliers and consumers. This project focuses on the causes of food wastage in dining halls, using the dining hall shared by the CAPT and RC4 in NUS as a case study. Qualitatively, the dining hall manager, caterers and students were interviewed to find out how the dining hall operates, the source of food wastage and difficulties in decreasing food wastage. Quantitatively, food wastage for dinner services were tabulated over a period of a week and compared to existing projections from the caterer. The results indicate that there are large fluctuations in take up rates for the various stalls and there is a difficulty in projecting the take up rates for each stall. Hence, a system to project the number of diners is key to alleviate this problem of food waste in dining halls.
Keywords: Waste Management, Responsible Consumption, food waste, RC dining hall, behaviour survey