Sep 20, 2026 · 12 min · 8 segments
There are thousands and thousands of research papers out there. Some are never cited and some are never even read. As an academic and knowledge worker its important for me to share this unfound…
Today's paper is Diverting Food Waste from Landfill in Exemplar Hospital Food Services, a Qualitative Study.
I would like to thank the authors, myself, Judy Porter, Denise Goodman, and Georgia Collins.
The study aimed to explore hospital staff members' experiences of implementing a food waste management strategy to divert food waste from landfill in their hospital food service.
Specifically, the objectives were to describe the journey undertaken by the hospital food service to implement this strategy and to identify the challenges and facilitators of this practice change.
Why is this important? I began my PhD with the intention to understand why we send an abundance of food waste to landfill every day in hospital food services.
When food waste is sent to landfill, it produces greenhouse gas emissions such as methane, which is 27 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Not only that, sending food waste to landfill costs money as well as a huge resource loss when we consider all the time and natural resources to grow and transport that food throughout the food supply chain to then eventuate in the bin.
Further, we now have a large food security problem where we are instead dumping food waste that may have been eligible for consumption or donation to those who need it most.
On a global front, we have the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to eradicate extreme poverty, protect the health of our planet and build a peaceful and prosperous world where no one is left behind.
Sustainable Development Goal 12 is responsible consumption and production, where sub-target 12.3 is to half per capita global food waste by 2030.
To support this goal, of course we need to reduce food waste as much as possible, where Japan is still the only country to have reached this goal since it was set in 2015.
The research project I'm talking about today focus on diverting food waste from landfill, which is technically reducing food waste as we are just sending it to somewhere else rather than landfill.
However, it is a pivotal starting point to have less climate impacts until we figure out to reduce waste generation in the first place.
The food waste recovery hierarchy proposes that food waste should first be donated to feed hungry people, then diverted to animal feed, provided for industrial uses to recover energy and lastly composted to create a nutrient risk soil amendment.
This is all before landfill and incineration which are the least preferred strategies for food removal.
I wanted to find out if any hospitals out there were using such strategies and how they implemented it in their practice.
Today's paper is Diverting Food Waste from Landfill in Exemplar Hospital Food Services, a Qualitative Study.
I would like to thank the authors, myself, Judy Porter, Denise Goodman, and Georgia Collins.
The study aimed to explore hospital staff members' experiences of implementing a food waste management strategy to divert food waste from landfill in their hospital food service.
Specifically, the objectives were to describe the journey undertaken by the hospital food service to implement this strategy and to identify the challenges and facilitators of this practice change.
Why is this important? I began my PhD with the intention to understand why we send an abundance of food waste to landfill every day in hospital food services.
When food waste is sent to landfill, it produces greenhouse gas emissions such as methane, which is 27 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Not only that, sending food waste to landfill costs money as well as a huge resource loss when we consider all the time and natural resources to grow and transport that food throughout the food supply chain to then eventuate in the bin.
Further, we now have a large food security problem where we are instead dumping food waste that may have been eligible for consumption or donation to those who need it most.
On a global front, we have the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to eradicate extreme poverty, protect the health of our planet and build a peaceful and prosperous world where no one is left behind.
Sustainable Development Goal 12 is responsible consumption and production, where sub-target 12.3 is to half per capita global food waste by 2030.
To support this goal, of course we need to reduce food waste as much as possible, where Japan is still the only country to have reached this goal since it was set in 2015.
The research project I'm talking about today focus on diverting food waste from landfill, which is technically reducing food waste as we are just sending it to somewhere else rather than landfill.
However, it is a pivotal starting point to have less climate impacts until we figure out to reduce waste generation in the first place.
The food waste recovery hierarchy proposes that food waste should first be donated to feed hungry people, then diverted to animal feed, provided for industrial uses to recover energy and lastly composted to create a nutrient risk soil amendment.
This is all before landfill and incineration which are the least preferred strategies for food removal.
I wanted to find out if any hospitals out there were using such strategies and how they implemented it in their practice.
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