Food Waste Focus

Whats more likely to attract positive attention when outsiders tour through a kitchen: a compost bin filled with todays leftovers or an empty speed rack in a walk-in? In most all cases the compost bin steals the show. But the empty shelf actually has a much bigger story to tell.

In fact, food waste prevention ranks at the very top of the EPAs food waste recovery hierarchy, well above other strategies including food recovery and composting. While each of these other elements are definitely valuable, waste prevention delivers the greatest benefits by far.

For example, by preventing and minimizing food waste:

• You save money. By controlling production and wasting less food, you purchase less or redeploy dollars toward higher priorities.

• You save staff time by being more efficient and not producing items you dont need.

• You save disposal costs by having less food waste volume and weight to haul away.

• You reduce resource demands on agricultural producers, allowing them to use less fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide and fuel.

• You reduce and avoid greenhouse gas emissions and toxicity from food waste downstream at landfills.

With powerful impact, why doesnt food waste prevention get more attention?

There are three reasons:

• Waste prevention isn’t visible or touchable. It’s hard to explain how the absence of something represents a huge victory when people generally want to see things in front of them.

• Some people don’t think they have much food waste or, if they do acknowledge it, believe they can’t do much to improve the situation. Of course, the reality is that every operation has actionable food waste and every operation has a chance to improve.

• Operators and consultants want to attack waste but they dont have any tools in their toolkit for waste prevention. The answer is simple and easy: the key to waste prevention is daily food waste tracking.

“We manage the things we measure.” By tracking food waste every day, you focus staff behavior and collect information to spot problems and opportunities.

Finally, food waste tracking and reporting gives you information that makes prevention highly visible and clearly illustrates the scope of the problem and the positive changes over time. Learn more about LeanPath food waste tracking systems: www.leanpath.com