Amount of food waste from restaurants under the coronavirus pandemic
Since the last week of February when the Japanese government requested suspension of large-scale events, the number of people eating out in restaurants have started to decrease. This decrease was accelerated in late March when the Tokyo metropolitan governor requested residents to stay home during the weekends. On 7 April, the Japanese Prime Minister declared a state of emergency requesting residents in Tokyo and six other prefectures to stay home except for when needed and restaurants to shorten their opening hours.  These measures decreased the restaurant’s activity dramatically.  According to the study by the Japan Food Service Association targeting its member restaurants, the sales of dining restaurants was 102.3%, 97.4%, 59.5% and 16.0% during the first four months of 2020 respectively compared to the same months of the previous year (Japan Food Service Association, 2020). We assumed that the food waste from restaurants decreased by these proportions during this period.