Waste Disposal Practices of Selected Local Restaurants in Lucena City

Food waste is composed of greens such as grass clippings, vegetable waste, fruit scraps, weeds, and coffee grounds and filter, browns such as dead leaves, wood chip, twigs, and fireplace ash, and recyclable packaging material such as shredded newspaper, cardboard, and paper. It is usually discarded or recycled for use in other materials. Food waste is caused by not consuming the proper amount of food, improper storing, overbuying supplies, and improper handling. Food waste can occur in restaurants; therefore, proper handling is required. The study is about food waste disposal techniques practiced by the selected local restaurants in Lucena City towards their food production. Researchers chose a food waste disposal topic to assess the techniques practiced by the selected local restaurants in Lucena City and to improve and give new options to make the techniques more innovative. The researchers made questionnaires and conducted a survey to know the techniques practiced, the profile of the respondents, profile of the business, the waste management practices of restaurants as perceived by respondents, the significant difference on the perceived practices when respondents are grouped by business profile. The researchers used descriptive and correlation research due to the fact that it is the most appropriate type with this study. The reason why the research is descriptive is because it describes the food waste disposal techniques practiced by the selected local restaurants in Lucena City. This also used the correlational type of research wherein the researchers assess the food waste disposal techniques practiced by the owners and personnel of local restaurants in Lucena City towards their food production. Percentage, frequency count, and arithmetic mean were utilized for the data analysis and analysis for variance for the significant difference. After gathering and analyzing the results, the study identified that there is no significant difference in the waste management practices when respondents are grouped by business profile. That result implies that the business profile does not affect the restaurants when it comes to a specific waste management practice. After coming up with the results, it is recommended that restaurants should apply the waste management practice of “Reducing” which is more convenient to do where they can keep the place clean, making less waste, and at the same time it can save more products in the restaurant. The final output of this study is a Training Program conducted by the researchers and the program focused on showing and teaching restaurant owners and staff the four waste management practices namely reducing, recycle, landfill, and composting.