Horeca food waste and its ecological footprint in Lhasa, Tibet, China

摘要: Abstract Consumer food waste in developing countries becomes increasingly important as they continue to urbanize and raise the income of their inhabitants. However, there are few empirical studies on scales, patterns, impacts consumer emerging economies (compared industrialized countries). Here we report an exploratory study amount Horeca (hotels, restaurants, cafes) its ecological footprint Lhasa, Tibet, western China, based a direct-weighing bottom-up approach 35 representative restaurants 2011 2015. We found that, per capita level, Lhasa has already reached high-level (128 ± 3 g/cap/meal 98 ± 2 g/cap/meal 2015) close that despite lower level income. The decline per-capita generation from 2015 most likely reflects reduction among local residents result recently issued strict regulations (especially those targeting official extravagance governmental reception meals at public expenses), similarly observed Japan Germany. On contrary, main tourism destination, tourists showed increasing trend contributed over half total both This also leads to, together with other factors such growing dining-out frequency residents, sharp increase (39.7%) (15 ± 1 kt) (21 ± 2 kt). wasted sector is equivalent 71,516 ± 7,705 ha, almost two times arable land area Lhasa.