Measurement of post-flight food waste: A case of South African Airways.

• Main Authors: D.C. Hlengwa, N.P. Sambo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AfricaJournals 2019-01-01
• Series: African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure
• Subjects: sustainable development; food waste; airline catering; South Africa
• Online Access: https://www.ajhtl.com/uploads/7/1/6/3/7163688/article_35_vol_8_1__2019.pdf

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promulgated 17 Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015. The overarching aim of these goals was to promote a socio-economically and environmentally sound development agenda across all countries worldwide in order to curb global social, economic and environmental issues that manifest themselves in widespread poverty, starvation, ill-health, inequality, inequitable resource distribution, pollution, climate change and many other indicators. This study was aimed at determining the contribution that the airline catering industry could make towards the attainment of some of the 169 2030 targets of the UN particularly those that speak to starvation, food waste and environmental destruction. The methodology was quantitative using data collection sheets in order to quantify the amount of food that returned from all economy class flights over a period of 4 days at the Johannesburg kitchen of Air Chefs South Africa. The design was a cross-sectional case study as data was collected at a specific point in time using one airline only. The study exposed that there were a lot of different categories of food that returned untouched but was regarded as spoilt and unfit for human consumption and this was not donated to charity organisations for fear of liability in case of food poisoning events.