Funded by the US EPA, the 102-page guide provides a number of useful tips, resources and case studies focused on food waste management at special events.

Download the full guide here.

Special events offer one of the best ways to introduce new waste reduction and diversion practices.   People tend to be more open to changing their approaches to waste at an event that is not the within their “normal routine,” thereby creating fertile ground for new ideas to be tested and take hold.

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

1) Create a written “Food Review Policy” which will be implemented after every meal service. The key aspects of this policy include:

• Bringing all overproduced, unserved food to a central location for review immediately upon conclusion of service
• Ensuring the review is conducted by a culinarian who is fully trained on food safety and HACCP requirements.
• Sort the items and document correctly for HACCP
• Determine an expected use for each retained item
• Communicate the plan

2) Be creative (within safety constraints).  Redirecting extra prepared items might seem like a challenge, but we see breakthroughs all the time. For example, one of our clients has created a café station solely as a venue for secondary uses.  Each day a team reviews saved items and brainstorms ideas to reposition the products.

3) Donate What You Cannot Use. If there is no immediate avenue for a secondary use within the operation, you can donate to a local food rescue organization.  Visit the EPA food scraps site or Food Donation Connection to learn more.

4) Track the leftovers and target future waste prevention. Track the amount of food waste electronically or on paper and use this information to focus staff behavior and minimize future overproduction. Waste prevention is always the ultimate goal.

Most of us live or work in an area that has some sort of food bank, soup kitchen or food recovery service.  But are we using them?  Do they want the kind of food we have in surplus?  Do we even have enough food to donate?  Are we concerned about food safety and liability?  Click on the link “food donation” to get answers and learn more about what you can do in your area.  This link will answer your questions about:  tax benefits for donating, information about food safety and protection from liability, even the typical types of food donated.  There are also several links to help you find a food bank or recovery site in your area.

Imagine if all food operations in one small town donated all surplus food to their local food bank.  How much food would that be?  How many hungry would they feed?

Here’s an example:  Disney.  It’s a theme park but made to look like a small town with shops, restaurants and hotels.  This ‘small town’ is really making a difference in their food donation efforts.  The Disney Harvest Food Program collects food that has been prepared and not served, donating almost 50,000 pounds of edible food each month!

Let’s all work on source reduction and feeding hungry people.  We can make a huge impact with those two goals.

Here at LeanPath, we talk about Food Waste Reduction on a regular basis.  Reducing food waste through tracking, goal setting and monitoring.  We give hints and tips about best practices from the many hospitals, colleges and corporate clients we deal with on a regular basis.  We love to hear when other groups are practicing food waste reduction on their own.

Check out this article about ARAMARK Higher Education and their contest with the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) and Southern Methodist University (SMU).  http://ow.ly/1qv4z

ARAMARK Higher Ed is hosting the semester long “Weigh the Waste” contest between the two universities.  The goal is to have the least amount of food waste per student over the semester.  They are looking to reduce POST-consumer waste, which is a problem in colleges and universities.

It’s great that a contest like this is happening.  Kudos to the people responsible:  Green Society presidents, student sustainability managers, the on-site food service managers and the contract food service companies, especially all the students involved.  A little bit of work, by many people, equals HUGE impact.

LeanPath has been in contact with a class from East Academy in Tennessee.  A group of kids there have started a food waste study of their own, as part of a school project.  They recently asked us for sample reports about the kinds of waste a typical foodservice operation produces.  I hope they aren’t too shocked by the information!  Like a typical large hospital can throw out $300 of ‘overproduced’ eggs each week.  Also, a typical university dining hall can toss out about 2,000 pounds of food per week.  That’s just pre-consumer waste, not tray waste.

I felt this was also an excellent example of teaching kids about food waste.  Read this blog snipet from http://fruitguys.com:

I’m a chaperone on my son’s 3-day, 5th grade outdoor education trip. We’re on a bus heading back from a camp in Santa Cruz…when a 5th grade girl in front of me leans around…“Wha-cha-do-in?” she chimes…She takes a bite of apple. She’s eaten it from the top – core and all. “I’m part of the hard-core-apple-club” she beams. “Red Tail showed me how.” Red Tail was the nature name for the camp counselor who led the garbology exercise. After each meal the kids scraped leftovers onto a scale and weighed them. Then they talked about how what remained affected the energy cycle. I also really appreciated the cabin rules my student group laid down such as “no using big words” and “absolutely no gambling,” but it was the garbology experiment that really caught my attention.

In three days our group of 60 kids went from producing 9 pounds of leftover food at the end of their meals to 3 pounds. A pretty good change just because they were conscious of it. Taking what you need and not more is a good lesson for kids (and adults). What I really liked about the experiment was that it taught conservation and in my book—whether you’re a business owner looking for efficiencies, a farmer hoping to reduce waste and increase yield, an individual looking to lessen your carbon or energy footprint, or a city looking to reduce waste—conservation is an important lifelong lesson that has only positive implications for everyone. No doubt that good habits start young but we all can create new habits at any age. – blog by:  Chris Mittelstaedt chris@fruitguys.com

Both groups are learning the importance of conservation.  Being aware of your food choices and the food waste you produce.  Great lessons to teach the next generation.

Although this article focused on healthcare (regulated medical waste, preferred purchasing, etc.), they spoke about a Practice Greenhealth study and their efforts to break ‘greening’ down into specific categories.  By doing this it helps the operations to identify the different areas that support and improve the ‘green’ initiatives.

Take a look at your company.  Is sustainability a separate department or part of every department?  Has the responsibility of sustainability fallen on one person as an addition to their ‘regular’ job? The study sites this:

Greening activity is moving beyond grassroots and departmental efforts towards a more coordinated effort and strategy. In fact, 97% of the applicant pool has a green team at their facility and 52% report the activity takes place within the Environment of Care Committee structure. Green teams provide the structure to gather baseline data, set goals, develop metrics, and through a diverse team approach and subcommittees for specific programmatic areas, work together to improve performance.

At LeanPath, we have found that the operations with Green Teams have higher success rates.  More people are involved, there is better ‘buy-in’ from all levels of staff and management, and everyone shares in the success of each accomplishment.  Gathering baseline data and setting goals helps to make everyone aware of the challenges.  We often see shocked faces when we report the actual pounds and dollars of an operations food waste.  The staff knows they aren’t purposely wasting food, but to see the waste in ‘black and white’, printed on a page really brings the challenge into the light.  Setting and achieving goals in a team dynamic also allows you to get many different solutions to one problem.

Another great reason to use a team approach for sustainability is to gather data on the life cycle of a product.  See the example below:

With an increased focus on waste prevention and life cycle analysis, some waste prevention activities are harder to capture. Cleveland Clinic, for example, boasts an over 25% recycling rate, which recently dipped as they conducted life cycle computing and electronics, which reduced the amount of computer “waste” generated altogether. All computers now go back to the manufacturer for refurbish, reuse, and redeployment. So while one may be impressed by hefty recycling rates, waste prevention activities deserve mention and can sometimes get lost in the numbers. This is why total waste generation should be tracked to reflect waste prevention successes.

An important goal for any type of organization: tracking total waste generation to reflect waste prevention successes.  We encourage everyone to work on waste reduction as the first step.  Purchasing less, producing less – leads to less waste.

Practice Greenhealth has just started tracking data this way, but they intend to continue tracking this data.  This long term tracking will help the industry to see how sustainability grows and trends over a long period.   More trend information should be available after the 2010 Environmental Excellence Awards to be presented at CleanMed 2010 in Baltimore Maryland, May 11-13.

Web links:

1. CleanMed: http://www.cleanmed.org
2. Green Guide for Health Care: http://www.gghc.org
3. Global Health and Safety Initiative: http://www.globalhealthsafety.org
4. Health Care Without Harm: http://www.noharm.org
5. Practice Greenhealth: http://www.practicegreenhealth.org
6. The Center for Health Design: http://www.health design.org

Check out these TWO webinars provided by SFM:

Project Management for Green Initiatives

Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 4 p.m. – 5 p.m. EST

http://www.sfm-online.org/Women_Council_LeadershipLink_Webinar.htm

(Added Benefit: Includes two Planning Exercises: Composting and Energy Efficiency)

“Have you been asked recently, to create and implement a sustainability initiative for your company or client and had little idea about where to begin? Sometimes initiating a new program can seem overwhelming, particularly when it is an add-on to your regular responsibilities. Where do you begin, whose buy-in do you need, when do you follow-up, how do you monitor and define success?

If you are one of the many people who have asked these questions, this upcoming webinar will have timely, useful information for you. It will give you an outline and step-by-step training on Project Planning.”

Redefining Foodservice Waste Management: What’s Next?

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

3 p.m. – 4 p.m. EST

http://www.sfm-online.org/Program_Committee_Webinar.htm

“With these challenging economic times – and in a society increasingly focused on sustainability – it’s no longer advisable for food service operators to treat waste as a peripheral concern. We spend massive dollars to purchase food and supplies that become waste and our discards makes a huge, negative impact on both our financial results and the environment. Cutting waste makes sense – and it also happens to be one of the least painful places to remove costs, avoiding the negative shockwaves of staff reductions or menu changes.

For these reasons, operators should be making waste management one of their top priorities. This starts by redefining their mental model to recognize waste management is not about garbage – it’s about reforming inefficient policies, procedures, and behaviors that lead to many types of waste.”

Check out these FIVE webinars provided by the EPA:

Food waste is the third largest stream of waste in the U.S. after paper and yard waste. The social, economic, and environmental impacts of food waste are enormous, including increased generation of greenhouse gas, negative impacts on sanitation and health, and the loss of potential improvements in soil health and food production. To help address these impacts, EPA Region 2 is partnering with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Solid Waste Resource Renewal Group at Rutgers University to offer a series of webinars designed to provide education on the best avenues and methods of food waste management. Generators of food waste, government representatives, and public stakeholders are encouraged to participate.

February 23

Overview of Food Waste, Climate Change Connection, and Waste Audits

March 10

Separation and Collection of Food Waste

March 17

Waste Reduction through Reuse

March 31

Composting and End-of-Life Management

April 7

Putting the Pieces Together and EPA Tools

For registration and information on the webinars above, please visit: www.trainex.org/FoodWaste