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Unfortunately, we have not yet finished our investigation, however, based on the results we gathered so far some interesting results were found. The survey we used tried to assess the feelings towards food waste and to gain insights into the reasons behind food waste among university students. The results of the question regarding their feelings towards their own food waste showed that almost all students felt (slightly) bad about wasting food. This insight shows that there must be at least a little willingness to engage in behaviour that helps to save food. In addition, the reasons for food waste seem to be that the students did not like the food or that the portions were too big. These answers already give us good indicators of what factors we should or can change to, hopefully, decrease food waste in the cafeterias. In addition, we asked their opinion about several interventions we thought of. The outcomes show that the students find providing doggy bags and allowing one to choose their own portions effective solutions for reducing food waste. Since we are still gathering responses no analysis was carried out on the data thus far, however, once the data collection is finished we aim to carry out some analysis to see if there is a specific trend amongst genders that we can take into consideration when discussing intervention options.
Furthermore, we still want to carry out an interview with the people involved in the UT cafeterias, and another interview with Appel the caterer of the UT. For this, we want to show them the outcomes of the survey to hopefully convince them about providing certain food-saving possibilities. In addition, as the results thus far show that the students feel bad about wasting food we hope that the cafeterias will see the importance of doing something about it and will see the willingness of the students to engage. Moreover, we want to see the actions they are already taking regarding this topic and gain more insight into their daily routines to see where it would be most helpful to implement an intervention to save food.

Since we are a little behind on our schedule, is the data not complete yet, but the pop-up class was nevertheless still very interesting for us. One of the reasons why the pop-up class was so interesting for us was because together with the experts we thought of new questions we wanted to ask to Appèl. And together we also think about a backup plan in case we don’t get in contact with Appèl, in that case we have multiple options: ask the consulting agency that helped Appèl or try to get in contact with them through the Green Hub of the university. Furthermore, we already thought about possible solutions while some were really interesting such as using a penalty system or offering doggy bags were others more a joke such as getting pigs on campus so they can eat the leftovers. Despite acting jokingly about it the idea of the pigs still has some merit and therefore is not totally put aside yet.

For the most effective solutions to tackle food waste in the UT cafeteria we keep coming back to: educating the people involved and adjusting the food portions. These solutions were mentioned a lot in literature and were proven to be effective interventions. In the pop up we mostly focused on the social and economic implications because that is where most of the problems lie. For example, economic implications could be a reduced profit if our solution would be for the canteens to purchase less food and implement an out of stock policy. Furthermore, a social implication could be that people do not have a lot of knowledge on the consequences of wasting food. The stakeholders helped us generate ideas and possible implications that came with the ideas. They added a lot of insight into the challenge and the possible solutions

This week we started the day by presenting our progress so far to the rest of the class. Afterwards we were tasked to use a pestle method in order to find out the main drivers of our issue. We used this in order to specify 3 drivers which are of the most importance to the issue we are trying to solve. We discussed what is holding certain people back from actively engaging with the issue. For example when looking at students we are looking at changing behavior through education. Steven mentioned that portion size can be seen as a social expectation, students are expected to eat lots so the portion sizes are huge. More social drivers would be the reputation of the university and the perception of the university. Having lots and good food gives a certain amount of prestige. The quality of the food may also be a reason for one to waste food. Economic drives would be appèl. Profit as a motive can be a detriment to food waste. Steven mentioned that maybe it would be a good idea to contact the green hub in order to get more data. Appèl might have a fear of running out of stock making them produce more than necessary. Reducing costs might also be a possible economic driver. We discussed a potential solution by decreasing portion sizes which might lead to lots of positive benefits in reducing food waste. Political actors would be the UT as appèls client. Their motivation to reduce waste is an important aspect to take into account. Economic drivers could be making students pay for the food that they waste. Legal drivers could be the law and its restrictions. Food policies could make it so that the caterer has rules that it has to abide by. The way food is stored could be a technological driver. In the next part of the brainstorm session we were tasked with expanding into a direction that we have chosen. We were tasked with identifying possible solutions and what they will actually do, who it will benefit/who it will be for and what interactions it would generate in society. The representative from “herenboeren” puts an emphasis on the cyclical nature of food. She was a fan of our idea of doggybags and education as a way to reduce food waste. This is also the solution which we gravitated towards the most. It would decrease food waste and would allow the university of Twente to act upon its function as an example towards the rest of society. It can be argued that this would benefit the whole of society. Less food waste means a smaller carbon footprint and a better and more sustainable future. It would generate as stated previously a societal examplerary function of the university. It would also provide poorer students with more quality food to eat at home as a result of the doggy bag system. We believe that informing students about ways to waste less and then immediately providing them with a better alternative in the doggybags could lead to a definite reduction in the food waste on campus. We also believe that it is important for the cafeteria and caterers to focus on providing food that leads itself to be taken home and eaten at a later date.