At LeanPath, we know that waste management can play a key role in helping culinary pros (new and tenured) find this balance.

How? By preventing & minimizing waste, operators reclaim dollars from the garbage which can then be invested toward important sustainable purchasing or packaging goals or other green objectives.   They also make a big dent in greenhouse gas emissions (upstream and downstream) by cutting waste.

And what is the first step in food waste reduction? Food waste tracking.  By measuring waste, you can diagnose problems and minimize the waste the next time around.  (Learn more about daily, automated food waste tracking here.)

The bottom line: Waste management is a great tool for chefs.  Not only does it solve one environmental challenge, it can give you the resources to venture into new sustainable  frontiers without adding additional costs.

The good news: Some operators (specifically, those with repeat customers and warewashing capabilities) can reduce this take-out waste by offering reusable take-out containers.

I attended a presentation at the recent NACUFS conference by Audrey Copeland (G.E.T. Enterprises) and Rita Gordish (ARAMARK Higher Education) about how this is working in colleges and universities. Here’s the process:

1. The operator sells its customers reusable clambshell containers.   These should be NSF 36 certified (a dinnerware standard).  Example: G.E.T. Enterprises’ Eco-Takeout containers.
2. Customers buy a take-out meal and return the dirty (but rinsed) container to a collection station near the cashiers at the foodservice establishment.  They receive a token or card that proves they returned a takeout container
3. When the customer needs a take-out , they present their token to the server and the food is provided in a clean reusable take-out container.

This approach allows the operator to wash and sanitize the take-outs using traditional warewashing capabilities.  The customer simply needs to return the take-out and pick up a clean one or a token each time.   This closed loop system ensures all participants “buy-in” and then each effectively owns one share in the system.

To launch this type of program, operators will need to consider:

1. Policies for handling damaged containers.
2. How to respond to lost containers (offer a discounted replacement)?
3. Decide whether to eliminate other take-out alternatives or apply a surcharges for disposable take-out containers.
4. Educate customers about leakage risks – the lack of a rubber seal on some of these reusables is what allows them to meet the NSF standards. However, it can lead to liquid leakage if the container becomes inverted during transport.
5. How to track participation.  Tokens work, but new POS advances may eliminate the need for them by automating the check-in and check-out process using ID cards.
6. Drying time for these items may take a few extra minutes.
7. How to collect the dirty reusables and keep them away from clean food?  Very doable, the process just needs to be defined.

Reusable take-outs represent an exciting industry advance. They can help operators cut costs and cut waste, and the implementation is not difficult. 

Bottom line: If you have repeat take-out customers and warewashing capabilities, you should definitely consider offering a reusable take-out container program.

The food section of the web site discusses waste as one of the key trends to be addressed by healthcare executives.  It also offers several specific actions that foodservice operators can take to reduce food waste.

This guide is a useful top-level resource for healthcare food and nutrition operators.  But it will also help foodservice managers working in most any high-volume operation who want to share a quick summary of sustainability concepts with their superiors, colleagues, or staff.

The infrastructure for handling waste (hauling, tipping, landfilling) is a relatively modern concept.  Once upon a time, not that long ago, people kept and reused most things and dealt locally with the residuals.  For many good reasons, including public health, our current system was invented and makes sense. However, having an open channel to the dump doesn’t mean we can or should use that capacity without restraint.

One Oregon couple decided to run a year-long experiment recently, buying nothing that wasn’t reusable or recyclable.  They describe their journey in a very candid interview with the Willamette Week newspaper and on their blog at A Year Without Garbage.

If you’re ready to make a change — but not ready to commit to producing zero garbage — read the easy, everyday tips in this Yahoo story: “Stop Throwing Away Money“.

Unfortunately, the disposable mindset thrives in most foodservice operations.

The good news” there are many things we can do to prevent waste in foodservice, beginning by tracking what we throw away every day. Once we see what we are discarding, we can begin to make conscious changes to our purchasing, production and menus to reduce this waste significantly. 

We may not completely eliminate garbage cans, but we can make them fewer and smaller with a series of easy choices.

This Practice Can be Part of a Recycling Program, But Many Restrictions Apply.

Salad Bar: A thorny issue

When starting a tracking/prevention program, it’s often the salad bar items them can be targeted early for an easy win. Why? Many cafe operations deem the salad bar easy to do, you set it up, keep it full and then throw it away.  It’s often not till we start tracking these items that operators realize how much waste comes off the salad bar daily, making it a good target for reduction. If operators review food waste tracking data for the salad bar, they often see a recurring pattern: lots of discarded lettuce as well as the “sneaky waste” in sides that can add up quickly. With a few changes, you can keep the salad bar looking bountiful and this is a great opportunity for waste prevention.

• Review restock policy:  How do you re-stock the salad bar throughout service?  Often we start will full pans of lettuce and keep them topped off until the end.  Instead of continually keeping full six inch deep pans of lettuce throughout the service, start off big and then rotate to smaller pans as service winds down.  You can then keep the salad bar looking full, but by the end you’re down to a four inch or smaller pans of lettuce, less waste.
• Take a look at the sides: Pay close attention to the sides and what is thrown away. Key in on the less popular items and remove them from the salad bar or move them to smaller vessels.  As with lettuce, the most popular items can be re-stocked into smaller containers as service winds down. 
• Look at the space: Salad bars can take up a lot of real estate, does your volumes necessitate such space?  Based on your sales, you maybe able to shrink down the salad bar and use decorative covers to make areas to display items such as breads, desserts or other impulse items.  You could be creating daily waste by putting out less popular or unnecessary items items to just fill the void. 
• Target service periods: If you run a dinner or late shift service some customers have had success by offering a selection of pre-made salads instead of a full salad bar.  Cuts down on waste and depending on timing and food safety any un-used salads maybe able to be rotated into the next days grab-n-go selections for lunch.  Just make sure your grab-n-go team takes inventory prior to building that days lunch selections!

TIPS to ZAP Waste:  A regular Food Waste Focus feature on waste reduction best practices. Return to the Food Waste Focus blog for more TIPS by searching the “Tips” tag.  Also subscribe to the Food Waste Flyer Newsletter. Both contain fresh, real-world insights on food waste management from LeanPath, the experts in food waste tracking systems.

Initial Expectations

The team at Riverside has been using the LeanPath system since June 2009. When they started the program they were hopeful that it would be able to reduce their food costs and waste. “This is especially important considering the current economic climate and the continued drive to do more with less. The system has allowed us to identify some products that were in need of replacement or general system improvement around their production.”

Experience with Waste Tracking

Her overall impression: “[LeanPath's] ValuWaste is great. It helps to raise the awareness for the associates and gives them a chance to contribute ideas to improve the operation. That is an aspect that we pride ourselves in as an organization, so it fit in with our culture. Another component that she enjoys about the LeanPath system, “It is very efficient to process the data and gain action steps so that keeps it achievable”.

“I think it is the right tool for the job. Prior to this, we were manually tracking waste which was very time consuming”. Because of the detailed reports, Jill was able to see how much food was being wasted due to expiration. “With The Joint Commission expectations on holding times, we need to utilize any remaining products or split cases quickly and safely. With an operation of our size, these items were adding up quickly”. She feels that when you look at what a wasted item costs in a week and then take the time to annualize it, you can really see the impact this has on your budget. (One of the features of ValuWaste Advantage 4 is a dashboard that shows how much food is wasted per week and what that adds up to over a full year.)

Recommendations

Her advice to managers new to the LeanPath system is to stay consistent with the program so the associates stay with it. “Make the information a part of associate meetings and recognize them for participating. We build the participation expectation into the annual evaluation review”.

Takeaways

Jill’s initial goal was to reduce food cost. Was this achieved? “When we started the program in June [2009], we were over 8% unfavorable on food cost compared to our budget. We are currently 10% favorable to budget for our YTD”.

Check it out: http://food-management.com/business_topics/management/composting-solutions-garbage-gold-0610/

Some refer to “waste” while others say “food residuals” “food surplus” “food scraps” or “organic waste.” The word choice often varies based on the relationship of the speaker to the food: for example, one chef might see overproduction and call it “food waste” while a food recovery organization might view the very same item and call it “edible surplus” worthy of “food recovery.”

Overall, “food waste” is the most general term and refers to: “any food substance, raw or cooked, which is discarded, or intended/required to be discarded. Food wastes are the organic residues generated by the handling, storage, sale, preparation, cooking, and serving of foods.”

Depending on how someone views this “food waste” they may upgrade or downgrade the terminology to reflect its value to them: it either becomes a valuable “residual” “surplus” or “source separated organic feedstock” or else it remains de-valued and labeled “waste” or “scrap” to be hauled away.

The takeaway: how someone describes the waste tells you a lot about whether they see it as a valuable resource (which it is!). If someone says “oh that’s just waste” they may not be appreciating the opportunity for savings and other beneficial uses.

Resources:

EPA Food Waste Site

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