Sustainability and Waste Management in the UK Catering Industry - Dissertation Example

Sustainable development has recently become a hot topic for discussion in most businesses. According to the World Commission on Environment and Development Report (1987, P. 43), sustainable development is defined as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” We can use the resources from the ecological system based on the available capacity of the resource base and making sure that the wastes we create do not threaten the capacity of that particular ecosystem (Jennings and Zandbergen, 1995, P. 1019).Although some companies want to reduce environmental problems, two different perspectives are just holding back the progress (Hoffman, 2000, P. 9):• The traditional aspect is concentrated on the debate about the observation of environmental legislation and the firms’ social responsibility.

• Second, the managers must accept that the firm’s overall strategy and environmental concerns inevitably must go hand in hand. Then, they need to find a way that satisfies the objectives of economic competitiveness and environmental protection at the same time. The environmental policy is guided by both legal sanctions and social sanctions; that is why the environmental problems are solved very slowly because there are too many issues to be concerned about. This literature review examines the awareness of the hotel sector to the issue of sustainability, explaining how they are going to reduce the waste and what they have been doing to reduce the effect of this on the environment.2.1 Awareness of the Problem of Environmental PollutionSustainability of the environment can be defined as “maintaining natural capital” (Goodland and Daly, 1996, P. 1003). Because of the excessive global depletion of natural resources, environmental awareness is going to be a significant issue for managers.

as the attitudes to, and use of resources” (Wight, 1994, P. 665).