To condense the campus diner burdens on the climate by reducing food waste and promoting meals with a lower carbon and water footprint.
• Establish an active and synergetic engagement with the stakeholders
• Engage with the customers and consider their opinion through a survey
• Create informative material to raise awareness about the environmental impact of our food choices
• Adding more plant-based meals to the menu
• Introducing half-portions
• Replacing most of the plastic containers with reusable or paper containers
• Introducing eco-labels: water footprint and carbon footprint per serving size of the main ingredients of the menu
• Spreading informative posters about food footprint
Next steps
• Organize new meetings inviting stakeholders from other restaurants
• Engage with KAUST community and gather their opinions on how to make the dining experience more sustainable
• Introduce the eco-labels on more menus
•Sharing our process on social media to inspire more young people
We assessed consumer behavior and awareness, and described and quantified food waste.
We identified key areas of action to be taken which can help to reduce food waste and make the diner experience better, healthier, and more environmentally friendly.
Ethical and sustainable criterion is an important factor of choice of meal for 89% of customers
42% of customers do not finish their meal.
69% of the customers say that a big portion is a major reason for not finishing the meal.
The provision of reusable takeaway containers and the introduction of less oily food is suggested by more than 50% of responders.
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"Do you want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food?
Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local
For most food products, transport accounts for less than 10% of GHG emissions
(In beef from beef herds, it's 0.5%)
Eating local beef or lamb has many times the carbon footprint of most other foods. Whether they are grown locally or shipped from the other side of the world matters very little for total emissions. "
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Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2020) - "Environmental Impacts of Food Production". Published online at OurWorldInData.org.
Carbon and water footprint labels
Animal source products have a large carbon footprint because of the inefficient transformation of plant energy to animal energy (land use), and due to the methane released from manure management and enteric fermentation in ruminants
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Nice and easy-to-read report: Environmental Impacts of Food Production
The largest meta-analysis of global food systems to date: Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers
3 minutes video about Why do we need to change our food system
