The Features of Waste Management in KFC Corporation

Introduction

Humans have always produce waste and disposed it in some way, so waste management is not a new issue. What has changed are the types and amounts of waste produced, the methods of disposal, and the human values and perceptions of what should be done with it (USEPA, 2009). The waste management has remained of the major environmental problems as its arising issue and concern of how much it is putting bot humans and non-human population under the danger. The practice of improper waste disposal results in unsanitary surrounding that eventually attract disease.

Over the past few years, not only the management of waste disposal have been have been a matter of concern for everyone but the difficulty of balancing the benefits of healthy environment alongside the economical costs to achieve this. The issues are always over which method of disposal should be used, and whether usage of some methods will be outweigh then others, and who should bare the economic burden. Awareness in area of waste and waste management is extremely important specially from a global perspective of resource management and the management the hospitality industry. It’s vital to have some knowledge about fast food chain waste management, also to make sure that the managers and employees know how to properly dispose their waste in their establishment.

KFC is a well-known worldwide renown fast food outlet, the trailblazers of the company have already started putting some plan of action together in order to convert the waste into energy in their stores. According to one of ‘Tidy Plante’ articles so far there has been 32% reduction in energy usage by putting LED lighting, solar panels, and smart electronics (which controls fryers running time) in their stores. They aim to be one of the greenest fast food chains in the world, by opening new stores with heat absorption from sun rays and refurbishment of the current stores to carry out such system. In the same article they have mentioned how KFC using their cooking oil in such way that it’s turned into energy.

Adding to that, one of the main research gaps that I have found at KFC is their distribution of packaging, although all their packaging is in paper but staff sometimes seems to over use the packaging. Being an employee of KFC I have observed this myself, as when packing the food, if food can fit in a small carrier pack staff tend to put the small pack again inside a packing bag, which can be easily prevented by starting the packaging from the start inside the big bag.

Literature review

Moreover, as this fast food chain aims to be one of the greenest fast food they have to they have complement their initiatives of greening the stores alongside their programme of reducing energy consumption. They currently used oils get sent to be used as bio-diesel. There has been suggestions that the oil produces from the sites gets used back in the sites by turning them into heat, hot water and electricity, this will only mean that KFC stores will have much cleaner compound. Have heat and hot water will reduces the stores reliance on fossil fuels as well making the stores meet their target of improvement and cost saving. As KFC mission is to be greenest fast food they took the suggestion on bored and have installed a machine in their Trafford Park outlet, where the machine filters the cooking oil turning it into fuel. This oil is directly pumped into the machine from the fryers meaning there is less risk of footfall outside and a great cleanliness for back of the house. This means the machine in one weeks provides 1 megawatt of heat from 250 litres of used oil, its equal to 95% of the heat and hot water demand in store. It also provides 0.8 megawatts of electricity which is 15% of sites electricity consumption. The machine in Old Trafford KFC site Serenella Sala, Bruno Notarnicola, Erwan Saouter, Assumpció Anton, Ulf Sonesson, Sarah McLare, (2017) talks about ‘comparative analysis of food waste management options’ where it mentions; the disposal of food is a large environmental problem. Only in the UK 15 million tons of food is wasted each year. This involves mainly disposing the food in landfilling which produces greenhouse gases which impacts the environment massively. This practice has been phased out by EU regulation, but is still the destination of up to 48% of food waste in parts of the UK. However, EU has guidelines of the waste food to be fed to animals, in many countries this practice is illegal, as it concerns the disease which animals can catch from human food. But, food waste for animal feed is becoming more and more popular with East Asian countries mainly.

The journal article also mention the food waste hierarchy which is introduced by the EU guidelines to improve the food waste disposal technics. The hierarchy shows the most and least way of disposal of food waste.

• Reduce food waste
• Redistribute (to homeless)
• Recycle (animal feed)
• Compost
• Recover
• Landfill remainderThe food waste hierarchy. 

Moreover, In KFC they have some plans and schemes following the the ‘redistribution’ way from the food wastage hierarchy in place in order to tackle the matter. According to ‘KFC’s role in Food Redistribution’ Article KFC has launched a ‘Food Donation Scheme’ where the stores donate the cooked and unused and perfect to fine to chicken, to charities local to the restaurants. Being able to carry out this scheme, it was important that all the team members were trained on how to store the cooked chicken in accordance to food safety which was one of the many challenges the fast food chain faced while implying this scheme. Not only the team member at KFC but the workers at charities must also be aware of the procedure to follow while defrosting and reheating the food. KFC food wastage is 2.5% of the total food used in their all restaurants, the reason behind this is that they use the unsold food to produce energy, as most of the food was still fine to eat. Have introduced the Scheme in 2014. They have a target of further reducing this waste to 1.6% as well as they are determined to carry on with their Scheme of donation the food to charities The KFC Food Donation Scheme is now in place in over 300 of their restaurants in the UK & Ireland and has helped donate the equivalent of 65,000 meals to those who need it most.

Adding to that, another journal article also discuses how KFC is focusing on using recoverable, reusable packaging by 2025. This method is aimed on reducing the usage of plastic packaging items in their stores. This is a sustainability commitment that is all plastic based, they plan on doing this by using sustainable packaging options and build on progress in some markets to eliminate plastic packaging items. The goal supports KFC's long-term plan to implement a more sustainable packaging strategy in its restaurants by both developing and using sustainable packaging options and builds on progress already made in some markets to eliminate plastic packaging items.'As a global brand that operates more than 22,000 restaurants in over 135 countries, KFC is in a position to have a real impact on how the industry approaches waste and packaging management overall,' said Tony Lowings, CEO of KFC, in a statement. 'With environmental sustainability as a core aspect of how we do business, this commitment represents a public acknowledgement of the obligation we have to address these serious issues.' 

Additionally, to meet these goals KFC has developed a roadmap which includes to partner up with major suppliers and franchises around the world to identify plastic alternatives in each market. They have team up with their franchisees to identify plastic waste reduction opportunities. As well as they have partnered with their suppliers to identify sustainable packaging like straws, cutlery and lids and setting market-specific goals to reduce, reuse and recycle. In addition to KFC's new plastics goal and the existing commitment by its parent company Yum! Brands, Inc. to source 100 percent of fiber-based packaging from certified or recycled sources by 2020, KFC has committed to global packaging innovation by signing on as a supporting partner with NextGen Consortium. 

NextGen is a multiyear, multi-industry global consortium that aims to advance the design, commercialization and recovery of food packaging alternatives. Through this partnership, KFC hopes to identify fiber packaging solutions that are recoverable across global infrastructures. As an employee of a franchise KFC I have already seen these changes claimed by KFC in action, in past month they have got rid of plastic straws and have brought paper straws. Which shows that they are serious about the managing of wastage at their stores. KFC will also have to support its franchisees to implement their own sustainability agenda in order to meet needs of the local markets and customers. These markets will also have their own local sustainability goals that will be based on markets condition and regulation. Also places such as KFC Singapore, India, Romania and France have intention to stop providing plastic straws and cup lids as well in coming years.

Sampling approach

As an employee of KFC, I have carried out a short survey with all my fellow colleagues to find out what they think about waste management at KFC. I decided to choose questionnaires for my research purposes as it was the most relevant type of method for my research. Questionnaires can be classified as both, quantitative and qualitative method depending on the nature of questions. As the questions I have asked in my survey are closed-ended questions some with multiple choice answer, this type of analysis is called the quantitative method they also involve pie-charts, bar-charts and percentages sometime.

One of the main reasons I used this type of sampling approach that the Advantages of questionnaires includes increased speed of data collection, low or no cost requirements, and higher levels of objectivity compared to many alternative methods of primary data collection. However, questionnaires have certain disadvantages such as selection of random answer choices by respondents without properly reading the question. Moreover, there is usually no possibility for respondents to express their additional thoughts about the matter due to the absence of a relevant question.

Adding to that, has carried out a research on fast food wastage on McDonald and KFC where they have used both qualitative and quantitative methods of sampling approach to find how often University students use these fast food places. As this was done on a large scale of people quantitative method will give better results, because they can be economical. This means they can provide large amounts of research data for relatively low costs. Therefore, a large sample size can be obtained which should be representative of the population, which a researcher can then generalize from. As well as the respondent provides information which can be easily converted into quantitative data (e.g., count the number of 'yes' or 'no' answers), allowing statistical analysis of the responses. The questions are standardized. All respondents are asked exactly the same questions in the same order. This means a questionnaire can be replicated easily to check for reliability. Therefore, a second researcher can use the questionnaire to check that the results are consistent. Below is the sample I have used to tackle my research:

Overall, how would you rate the waste and recycling service?

What improvements would you like to see to the service?

• I am happy with the current service
• More information about waste management
• More information about what can/cannot be recycled
• More recycling
• Other

Perceived contributions and implications

Environmental vulnerability, mainly atmosphere air pollution from cars and factories activities, water pollution and the growing population of living environment have a greater-effects on human health. Also, urbanisation, rapid industrialisation, and economic development have been the main causes of the increase in waste generation. Poor waste management may result in urban, sanitary and environmental problems. Fast food restaurant contribution to the environmental issues the most with amount of wastage that they produce. My research proposal was about how fast food chain such as KFC manages the food wastage at its restaurant, from the information that I have found they are a Responsible business who carries out its day-to-day operation with keeping environment issues in mind.

My research will enable the readers to know more about how this waste is manged at different stores of KFC. Not only that it’s a useful piece of information which can be used in KFC’s stores to bring even more changes where it’s necessary. Although from this study its already clear that KFC has alot of plans in action to reduce as much as they can thru wastage whether it’s reusing their oil as energy resource or whether its there ‘Food donation schemes’ they have in place. Using the correct amount of packaging is something this study can contribute to the KFC stores to be even more effective in being socially responsible.

However, there are some implications which can prevent these plans to happen such as time. It can take a long for all KFCs to implement all the plans and schemes that they have in place to put them in action. Training all the staff to use the correct amount of pack can be frustrating and time consuming.

Limitations

Overall, there are number of limitations that need to be considered when interpreting the results of this study. First of all, the questionnaire which was carried out in the sampling method, was only conducted on a limited number of people meaning a small population, this means the sample will not give a very accurate results. Collecting these results can be time-consuming. It takes longer for the respondent to complete open questions. This is a problem as a smaller sample size may be obtained. It also is time-consuming to analyse the data. The questions lack detail, because the responses are fixed, there is less scope for respondents to supply answers which reflect their true feelings on a topic.

Reference

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