According to Marello and Helwege (2014), one of the important step need to be taken is by learning the correct ways in reducing the amount of food waste. A study found out that most people are not aware about the food waste and tend to not understand that in future it will affect the people sustainability (Jereme, 2016). This is supported by Gökdere (2005) stated having a knowledge will tend to make people understand about food wastage and in a meantime know about the effect towards the environment. In addition, it has become one of the concerning issues that implicated in policy in term of the security and environmental sustainability (Evans, 2012; p. 42). Further, a place like the university is a special case study as before this there is not much has been done especially in term of food waste issue.
Ideally, Eco-Campus Management Centre (2016) cited that the existence of the Eco-Campus Centre is one of the ways towards sustainable development and it is suitable concept of sustainability to promote and balance the social needs with the economic growth and environmental integrity. In reality, higher education institutions in Malaysia view this concept as a difficult task due to less supervision in term of environmental and lack of engagement among campus community in term of environmental care (Norizan et al., 2011). This is supported by Al-Khatib et al., (2009) stated that several reason that make them litter are include:
- lack of social-pressure to-prevent littering;
- absence of realistic-penalties or consistent-enforcement; and
- lack of knowledge of the-environmental-effects of littering.
In addition, the existence of available waste-collection-bins, on a site is also one of the reasons (McAllister, 2015). As a result, Abas and Md Nor (2014) cited that in Malaysia, the tertiary institutions are one of the biggest contributors which is about above 20% of solid waste wasted in a year.
Even though there is many studies mentioning about food waste management but there is a lack of research or past studies on practice of food waste management in Sabah. With this, it creates difficulty in knowing the practice of food waste especially in University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) campus. A study carried out by Rosazman & Velan (2015) where most of the studies that been conducted are mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and none in Sabah.
