Based on the carbon footprint, how much waste does takeout produce compared with the traditional way

¹ Energy and environment, Southeast University, Nanjing Jiangsu, JS 25
² U.S Center of Int’l Combined Curricula, Suzhou Jiangsu, SX 349

^† These authors contributed equally.
^* Corresponding author’s e-mail:
^a 213183009@seu.edu.cn,
^b 972759986@qq.com

Abstract

With the development of the Internet and the expansion of online to offline delivery services, takeaway food becomes a part of food consumption. This paper examined the difference between the dine-in and take-out food with a carbon footprint of food waste among 346 people in Jiangsu Province, China, by using the online questionnaire to figure out how much food they may waste in daily meals. Three aspects were researched in the questionnaire: food classification, the quantity of waste food, the waste of takeaway food packaging. The result showed that the waste caused by takeaway is one-third more than the waste caused by dine-in. People might waste more due to the sale promotion strategy of merchants and the discounts they offered. The result also showed that the diversity of food was relative to the waste of rice. The higher the variety was, the more rice people might waste. The environment is damaged by sophisticated packaging due to its difficulty to degrade.