OIM Faculty Research: Reducing Food Waste

By Arzum Akkas, associate professor

Food waste is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time. Globally, nearly one third of all food produced is wasted, representing not only a massive economic loss but also an enormous environmental burden. Food production consumes around 70 percent of the world’s freshwater, much of which is effectively wasted when food is discarded. The journey from farm to fork—spanning irrigation, fertilizer and pesticide use, harvesting, packaging, transportation, and refrigeration—generates significant greenhouse gas emissions, all of which are needlessly generated when food ends up in landfills. Decomposing organic matter in landfills emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas far more damaging than carbon dioxide. Reducing food waste is therefore not only a moral and economic imperative but also a powerful lever for mitigating climate change and conserving natural resources.

Over the past decade, I have been researching the food waste problem with a focus on its operational root causes in retailing—from inventory management to employee incentives. Much of this work has involved close collaboration with retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers to understand how supply chain decisions shape waste outcomes. In a recent study commissioned by a European nonprofit, I interviewed retailers across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Africa to examine how they handle surplus food—products that are still edible but unlikely to sell at full price. I studied a range of “exit” strategies, including repurposing, markdowns, food donations, animal feed, and recycling through anaerobic digestion. The study revealed both regional differences in infrastructure availability and technology adoption and common challenges related to process optimization, incentive design, and effectiveness of donation networks.

Differences in Discounting Practices

One particularly interesting theme that emerged during my interviews was the varied perspectives on markdown practices. Many retailers expressed enthusiasm about discounting soon-to-expire products, as it allows them to recover some of the financial loss from unsold inventory. However, markdowns also come with trade-offs: they can cannibalize full-priced sales, require additional labor to relabel and relocate products, and sometimes draw criticism from food banks and rescue organizations who receive fewer donations as a result. Notably, British retailers were the most enthusiastic about markdowns, leveraging advanced technologies and pricing algorithms to dynamically optimize discounts. In contrast, American retailers expressed hesitation, citing fears that discounting aged inventory might damage consumer perceptions of their brand.

This insight motivated a follow-up experimental study to examine how consumers perceive markdowns on soon-to-expire products. Partnering with an independent grocery retailer near Boston, we tested whether such discounts would negatively affect perceived store quality. We introduced three discount labels—“value choice,” “sustainable choice,” and “zero-waste choice”—and compared them to a no-discount control condition. Contrary to the common concern that markdowns signal lower quality, we found that the zero-waste message was associated with higher quality ratings. We did not find evidence that the no-discount condition led to higher perceived quality, challenging assumptions that avoiding visible discounts protects brand image.

To examine whether these perceptions vary across cultural and market contexts, we extended the experiment to an online setting with participants from the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and South Africa. The cross-country results revealed distinct consumer responses to environmentally framed markdowns. In the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany, such messages generally enhanced perceptions of brand image and purchase intent, though the effect in Germany was only marginally significant. In contrast, South African consumers reacted negatively to the “zero-waste” framing, associating it with diminished brand image and reduced likelihood of purchase.

Together, these studies show that operational decisions aimed at controlling food waste must be aligned with branding and consumer experience. For those working in retail, supply chains, or sustainability roles, the key takeaway is this: food waste reduction isn’t just about doing the right thing or protecting margins—it’s a design and communication challenge. How surplus is handled, framed, and communicated can influence not just margins and environmental impact, but also consumer trust and loyalty.

About Arzum Akkas, PhD

Arzum Akkas is an associate professor in Operations & Information Management at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. She holds a PhD in engineering systems and a master’s degree in supply chain management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Istanbul Technical University.

Before joining the University of Massachusetts, Akkas taught at Boston University and MIT.

Before her academic career, Akkas spent eight years in industry, holding roles as management consultant at Archstone Consulting (now part of the Hackett Group), operations manager at PepsiCo, and business systems consultant for Manugistics (now Blue Yonder).

Akkas’s research focuses on food supply chains, with an emphasis on sustainability and retail food waste. She has investigated the root causes of food waste in supply chains and developed tools for waste control through shelf space management, employee incentives, and inventory management. She collaborates with major retailers and manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe to enhance operational efficiency and achieve sustainability goals.

In addition to her research, Akkas teaches graduate courses in Operations Management and Supply Chain Management. She also offers a Sustainable Supply Chains course, available to both graduate and undergraduate students.