Effectiveness of Waste Audit and Waste Management for Food Companies: A Case Study on Subway, New Zealand

This presentation focuses on the effectiveness of waste audit and waste management in reducing food waste in the food industry, specifically through a case study on Subway in New Zealand. It explores the major factors affecting food waste in Subway and provides recommendations for improving waste reduction strategies. The presentation also discusses the scope of the research, relevant literature review, and the importance of food waste control.

Effectiveness of Waste Audit
and Waste Management for
the Food Companies: A Case
Study on Subway, New
Zealand
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

Background to the research
 Purpose of the research:
 How can the system of waste audit and waste management
improve the level of food waste in food industry of New Zealand?
 Waste audit and waste management are highly important in food industry
 This industry deals with perishable products
 Level of waste is very high in food industry
 This not only increases cost of the companies but also results in unnecessary waste of
large amount of resources
 Food and inventory waste is a luxury due to:
 high level of poverty across the world,
 large incidence of hunger,
 lack of adequate nutrition, and
 unnecessary food waste by food companies (Gundersen & Ziliak, 2015)
 Controlling food waste has become a major agenda of the food industry
 System of waste audit will be evaluated in this research to explore its effectiveness in

Research Aim and Questions
 Research aim:
 To investigate and examine the effectiveness of
the waste audit system in implementing an
efficient food inventory and waste management
system in Subway, the subs and salad restaurant
chain in New Zealand
 To recommend ways to improve the system in
order to reduce the food waste even more.
 Research questions:
1. What are the major factors that affect the food
waste in Subway?
2. How to reduce the waste in Subway through

Scope of research
 Scope of the study includes:
 Exploration of waste audit system used in subway
outlets for controlling waste of food inventories and
resources like capital
 Efficiency of the inventory and waste management
processes and its impact on the business
performance and sustainability
 Effect of food waste on the sustainability and
human welfare

Brief overview of the relevant aspects of literature review: Waste
management in the food industry
 Restaurant and food industry is one of the biggest producers of waste
 Food waste generates greenhouse gases emitted from the food
decomposition in the landfills
 In Australia,
 approximately 1.9 million tonnes of commercial food waste is discarded yearly,
and
 two-thirds of the waste is generated in the food retail sector and the food and
beverage sector (Kibler et al., 2018).
 GHG emissions from food waste equal to the emissions from iron and steel
production.
 Cost of food waste includes harmful greenhouse emissions from the
landfills, transport, water and the production costs
 Specific areas for food wastage: contamination, spillage, food not used
within the expiry date, poor quality, unhealthy food, overstocking and
expiry of inventories, unaccounted consumption, damage during
transportation etc. (Sun et al., 2018).

Waste management in the food industry
 Almost one-third of the food production is wasted globally during the supply chain activities
 In developed countries, around half of the total food waste occurs after the purchase by the end consumers
(Woolley et al., 2016).
 Capability of feeding 9 billion people by 2050 is dependent on the processed foods
 Efficient reverse logistics system required to handle delicate food products (Vijayan et al., 2014).
 Order shortening and menu alteration as per people’s preferences are necessary (Charlebois, Creedy & von
Massow, 2015)
 Issues:
 Dearth of transparency in the demand information,
 poor quality,
 process controls,
 packaging systems,
 inefficient shelf-life management (Mena et al., 2014)
 Lack of awareness
 less number of socially responsible activities,
 fewer initiatives for reduction in carbon emissions,
 dearth of training and trained professionals to implement sustainable practices (Singh & Shabani, 2016).

Food waste control and its
importance
Measures to be taken:
 Raising awareness and responsibility among the employees about the
significance of food waste reduction (Strotmann et al., 2017)
 Improving Packaging system and correct date labels (Verghese et al.,
2015)
 Identifying and controlling the invisible food waste (Derqui, Fayos &
Fernandez, 2016)
 Demand control, efficient food supply chain network and
transformation of food system (Garnett, 2014).
 Nigerian food industry is adopting sustainable and advanced
technologies for lowering the food waste (Oladepo, Ilori & Taiwo, 2014).

Food waste in New Zealand
 Food waste reduction campaign resulted in the decrease of food
waste by 27%, which indicated that almost 14000 tonnes of food
waste were diverted directly (Scoop.co.nz, 2019).
Households $750 million annually
New Zealanders (On an average) $1.8 billion yearly
Sylvia Park (Largest mall of New
Zealand)
600 tonnes of waste yearly and
half of that is food waste
Bin audit
3.17 kg of food waste (2014-15)
3.15 kg (2018 )
Amount of cakes thrown away by Kiwis
annually 1787 tonnes
Major wastes
Bread, leftover, oranges,
mandarins, apples, bananas,
potatoes, poultry, rice, lettuce
and beef

Food waste in the USA
Waste impact on
production
Percentage of food waste among the total food production 40%
Average annual food waste 133 billion
pounds
Average calories wasted per person, per day 1249 calories
Cost impact
Annual cost of uneaten/wasted food at the retailers, homes and
restaurants USD 165 billion
Average per capita cost of food waste for a family of four USD 1500
Environmental
impact
Landfill weight containing food waste (single largest source of
municipal waste) 20%
Impact of Methane gas produced from food waste
21 times more
powerful than
CO2
Opportunities
Diversion of 15% of total food waste would reduce food
insecurity in USA by half
Food waste can be composed to soil additives for achieving
sustainability
Food waste can be used for generating electricity
Organic produces are healthier but often look ugly and large
institutions should purchase those to encourage farmers and
reducing waste amounts
(Source: Gunders, 2012)

Summary of analysis and Conclusions
Interview
questions
Manager’s response Employee’s response
Tenure in Subway 5 years 2 years
Regular business
performance of
Subway outlet
Sales and profits higher during festive
seasons
Moderate during regular months
Sales higher during festivals
Moderate sales in other times
Opinion on waste
audit and waste
management
Inefficient system as waste and cost of
operations are much higher
Ineffective as level of food waste
is high
Average level of
waste
High amount of waste, caused due to
inconvenient location, inefficient waste
management and supply network, high
competition
Daily average waste 10 to 12 kgs
of food and inventories, worth of
NZ $75-100.
Opinion on waste
audit system
Efficient system can identify specific
waste areas to address and forecast
optimum production
Efficient system will help in
identifying loopholes and
predicting sales
Suggestions to
improve waste
management
efficiency
• Improvement in supply chain network
for reducing damage during
transportation
• Development of warehouse
infrastructure
• Packaging should be improved
• Use of advanced software for
sales prediction
• Efficient inventory
management required

References
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