Economic Analysis of Food Waste in the Catering Activity: Results of a Survey Conducted in South Italy

The issue of food waste is currently submitted to the attention of national and supranational institutions for its ethical and environmental implications. It is estimated that every year in the world food waste amounts to around 1.5 tons, equal to a third of the overall food production intended for human consumption. The present work focused on the analysis of the phenomenon of the food waste generated by the catering sector in some cities of southern Italy. The carried out research aimed at investigating the restaurateur’s behaviour concerning the food raw materials’supply methods and frequency, the inventory management capacity, the environmental sensitivity, and the culture of waste reduction. The analysis allowed to identify the most wasted food product groups as well as the main causes that generate waste. The detection technique used was the administration of an on-line questionnaire, specially prepared according to the research objective, that was uploaded on the Google Forms platform of docs.google.