A new trend in education and research at budapest business school: green catering

Abstract

Budapest Business School, as an institute of higher education of the 21th century, is committed to the goals of sustainable development. These goals of 17 fields where adopted by 193 countries at the United Nations Conference at New York. Among these 17 fields several ones are linked to our institute. The goal most linked is the aim of sustainable consumption and prevention of climate change through modification of consumption patterns. In this sense the Faculty of Commerce, Catering and Tourism has chosen sustainable catering and hospitality as the research field of its Research Center. Detection and calculation of the environmental impacts can be given by several indices. Methodology and content of these indices are continuously developing and their relevancy can be from local to global scale. Determination of the processes and the impacts gives heavy tasks because of modification and number of the different methods. Among the several indices carbon-footprint is the most suitable to the goals of our Research Center. Introduction of the methodology of carbon-footprint is of high importance: this indicator provides opportunity to measure the environmental impact and sustainability of the catering sector, provides the opportunity of making comparisons, and can help to influence the decision making of the consumers and of the contractors. A case study is summarizing the difficulties of the calculation of carbon-footprint in the field of catering, its advantages and limiting factors beside the detailed introduction of the carbonfootprint literature.