A study of Chinese restaurant reverse logistics: Issues and challenges of kitchen waste disposal
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Abstract
In recent years, as environmental degradation is increasingly seriously, protecting the environment has also been discussing for a long time. In terms of the catering industry, the ways to dispose of kitchen waste play a significant role in the green recycling process. From the collection, recycling to reprocessing, the operation model is the main part that needs to be analyzed in depth, and the model is also different based on a country’s policies, technology or other factors. In terms of China, the fast economic growth has improved people’s living standards to a large extent, while the standards’ improvement also brings an increasing amount of kitchen waste to people’s daily life.
As China is a big country and different provinces have their specific waste disposal policies, this study focused on Chengdu, a large city with around 14 million residents. In Chengdu, although the government and waste recycling plants have been trying to push the circular economy in kitchen waste handling, many restaurants and local farmers are keeping traditional disposal methods, polluting the environment and posing a threat to natives’ health.
Based on that reason, the main purpose of this study is to find out the recycling approaches that most Chengdu restaurants are using nowadays and analyze the potential problems behind so as to propose possible improved approaches. According to online questionnaire feedback and academic resources, this study concentrated more on the transformation of organic fertilizer and biodiesel, and also emphasized the impact of personal benefit and law enforcement. After that, in order to improve kitchen waste recycling network, the researcher indicated preferential policies, technology improvement and perfecting legal system are the three main measures that the government and public should take into account. For the main issue which is extra profits, many restaurants selling kitchen waste to local farmers already had a long history, and it seems that solving this problem still has a long way to go