Food waste from institutional food services accounts for a significant part of global food waste. Food waste sorting (FWS) at the source reduces waste management costs and environmental impacts in organizations. Yet what drives individual FWS behavior remains underexplored. This study explores the psychological process of FWS in institutional catering environments, integrating the value-belief-norm model, the theory of planned behavior, and self-determination theory. Data were collected from 431 university students in China and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results indicated the interplay of values, beliefs, norms, and motivations in shaping FWS behaviors. Social value orientations (SVO) indirectly affected FWS through awareness of consequences and personal norms. Subjective norms, potentially attributed to external regulations in canteens, influenced FWS intention through personal norms and induced FWS primarily via controlled motivations. The findings imply that behavioral strategies to induce FWS may leverage social influence and external regulation while also translating values and knowledge into intrinsic motivations through educational programs and awareness campaigns.

Food waste is currently a widely discussed phenomenon with significant economic and social consequences. One third of the food produced in the world is wasted at various points along the food supply chain. This article presents a comprehensive study that examines consumer behavior in dealing with food waste and activities in the composting process that enable waste sanitation. The survey conducted as part of this study showed that consumers want to eliminate odors, are concerned about potential infections, and generally sort less food waste. This study suggested that the addition of appropriate additives could be a solution. The results indicated that additives could eliminate negative side effects such as unpleasant odors, the presence of insects and rodents, and act as a prevention of the occurrence of pathogenic organisms. Tea tree oil showed the best positive physical and chemical properties among the additives tested (CaCO3 and citric acid) with a significant effect on inhibiting the growth of bacterial strains such as Salmonella strains and had the strongest antibacterial effect, neutralized unpleasant odors, and stabilized the waste. The use of additives could be a future solution to meet consumer demands, improve the quality of food waste and advance the circular economy to improve the sustainability of agricultural systems.

Economic incentive is thought a good intervention type that can encourage residents to do food waste sorting by many cities\' government in China. However, there is a lack of long-term, large-scale study. So the business-led incentive scheme was studied by a case study in Nanjing, China, which focuses on food waste sorting. The results showed that the incentive can encourage at most an average 37% of residents to start and then continue to do food waste sorting regularly. Later, the incentive cannot encourage more even with many non-economic interventions. And most of these participating residents (31%) were encouraged at the first 12 months. The results also showed that house price had a negative relationship with the community sorting performance. The comparative study results showed that the community committee must be involved in the non-economic interventions to encourage more residents to take part; otherwise, the company will fail even after many attempts. So the government should apply the incentive policy by dialectical view in food waste sorting. And the incentive scheme should involve all the stakeholders to apply non-economic interventions to encourage more residents to do food waste sorting.