Problem: AGU students who eat in the university’s dinner hall are taking meals which they can’t finish all of them or they don’t want to eat. Therefore ending up wasting food.

Survey results: 41.6% of the students waste the food because they simply don’t like them. 37% think that the food is not cooked well. And the remaining students have mixed opinions like they think the portions are too big or they are spicy/salty or they are eating the food before they are hungry. We have also conducted this research to find out what are the most wasted foods. The most wasted meal is the main meal by 58% percent followed by rice (41%) and soup with 37%.

Model Solution: Our BAT group’s solutions for the food wasting in the university’s dinner hall are as following:

1.Food providers can be changed, so menu and also the taste of the foods change. From the survey results it is certain that most of the students are wasting their meals because they don’t like their tastes. Given to the fact that Kayseri is a big city and there will probably be better food providers around the city it shouldn’t be hard to find a provider which students actually like eating from. It will also help to refresh the mood around the university where for years eating the same types of food. Therefore, both students and environment will get benefited from this solution.

2. Just the menu alone can be changed by analysing what students are wasting the most. How this plan will work is that in each week, the food serving crew should be interrogated. They are the ones who are washing the dishes, taking up the leftovers and unloading the wasted food so they will be aware of what is being wasted the most. Each week the crew will detect a most wasted food and in next week that food type will be replaced with another type of food and the research will go on. It is expected that within a year we will be able to determine the exact food combination which minimizes the wasted food. This method requires less work and resources from the first one but it will not bring the same amount of refreshment which comes with the first method. 

3. The default portions will get smaller and bigger portions will be given to the ones who requested. This method has been planned again by taking the survey results into consideration. While some people think that the given portions are not enough, there are also people who think the opposite. None of them can be claimed to be wrong. It is about their desires and capabilities. Therefore, we designed this simple solution to leave the decision into students whether they want the previous “big” sized portions or the new small ones. Actually, the students are able to switch to a smaller portion by talking with the food serving crew. But in reality most of the students are being timid to express themselves. For that, the crew can intentionally prepare small and big portions together to leave the decision to the students or an informing paper can be hanged somewhere in the dining hall to inform students that they can decide the size of the portions. 

Another way to arrange the portions is self-service. In this way everyone gets the amount of food that they are capable to finish. This solution also requires less people in the serving crew and by making the students decide and prepare their portions therefore making the students will be more pleased with the “IKEA effect”. The problem with this method is that there should be a crew to check if the students are taking more food than they should and it shouldn’t be ignored that there will be students who will try to break the limits. Therefore serving for the exact opposite purpose by increasing the waste.

4. The wasted food will be sent to feed the street animals. Whatever we try, there will be always some waste. This method is the addition for all the methods above to make use of the wasted food while taking care of the street animals.