Food Waste Reduction and Recovery

Waste?  This is food and it’s too valuable to waste!

Join us to meet three outstanding leaders who are changing the mind set of industry in diverting away from landfills what was once a waste and is now a product which not only saves companies disposal costs, but also creates new business opportunities.  Economic growth and environmental responsibility — we applaud these companies and their successes.  Please join our speakers as they help us understand industry’s issues with organic materials, disposal options and their strategic decision-making approaches.

Speaker Bios

In 2001, Publix Super Markets created the Get Into a Green Routine program for environmental responsibility.  The program began with education and an emphasis on energy conservation and has extended to waste reduction, recycling and conservation of resources.  Under their Corporate Sustainability Statement, the commitment to recycle store-generated materials destined for landfills helped to raise the company’s overall recycling rate to 45 percent in 2009.

Kim Brunson, Recycle and Solid Waste Manager, Facilities Administration, Publix Super Markets, Inc., Lakeland, FL

Hormel Foods consistently measures and reports progress toward reducing their environmental impact.  They report energy, solid waste,  water, and greenhouse gas data for their U.S. manufacturing locations. Dedicated teams work to identify ways to reduce the company’s environmental impact.  Hormel uses a web-based Environmental Management System to track and monitor progress toward meeting environmental requirements.  This system includes compliance calendars, policy and procedure information and environmental training materials.   To encourage innovative solutions at Hormel plants, an internal Best of the Best competition includes a sustainability category.  In 2009, the competition grew with 44 entries which included projects involving water conservation, energy reduction and solid waste minimization.

Tom Raymond is the Director of Environmental Sustainability at Hormel Foods.  With more than 15 years of experience in environmental management, Tom is responsible for managing the environmental compliance and sustainability efforts for Hormel Foods manufacturing plants.  He started his career at Hormel Foods in 2005, and under his guidance, the company has made significant progress toward achieving its environmental sustainability goals. Tom is a graduate of St. Cloud State University (St. Cloud, Minn.) and holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and environmental studies. He also holds a master’s degree in environmental management from Samford University (Birmingham, Ala.) and a law degree from Seattle University (Seattle, Wash.). He is a licensed attorney in the States of Washington and Minnesota.

Founded in 2004, LeanPath, Inc. is a technology company providing food waste tracking systems to the hospitality, foodservice, and restaurant industries. The company’s core offering, the ValuWaste® system, is a proprietary, comprehensive waste tracking technology package that helps foodservice operators reduce food waste, save food dollars and operate more sustainable facilities. ValuWaste includes data collection terminals, which are used to track pre-consumer food waste, a software application, which provides a detailed portrait of the waste stream, and training and coaching that enable chefs and front-line teams to proactively reduce waste.   LeanPath partners with leading foodservice, hospitality, restaurant and government organizations at sites in more than 24 U.S. states.  LeanPath’s strategies for waste prevention represent an economic and environmental opportunity for foodservice operators who need help finding the tools and methods to launch a true source reduction effort.   Strategies for source reducing pre-consumer and post-consumer food waste in restaurants and foodservice operations will be discussed along with food waste tracking, production systems, portioning and service-style adjustments.

Andrew Shakman is Co-Founder and President, CEO of LeanPath, Inc., a technology company providing food waste tracking systems to the foodservice and hospitality industry.  LeanPath systems help foodservice operators prevent and minimize food waste over time.  Andrew is a primary contributor to the Food Waste Focus blog and speaks frequently at foodservice industry events.  Previously, Andrew was President of Nine Dots, a technology firm serving food clients including Nestle, Quaker Oats, and Dole Food Company.  He holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.F.A from the University of Southern California.

Click to register for this free webinar today.

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.

Take the Food Recovery Challenge!

How much of your food and money are you literally throwing away?  In 2008, American businesses and households generated 32 million tons of food waste.  Of that, 31 million tons (97%) was thrown away into landfills or incinerators!

Much of this “waste” was not waste at all, but actually safe, wholesome food that could potentially feed millions of Americans or discards that could be recycled (composted) into a nutrient rich soil amendment.  And since food is such an incredibly valuable resource that can be used to protect our soil and water or grow our next generation of crops, there are just so many better uses for it to consider before putting in a landfill or incinerator.

Which is why the US EPA Food Recovery Initiative and the WasteWise Program have joined forces to challenge business, industry, and institutions to reduce, donate, and recycle as much of their food waste as possible – saving money and helping protect the environment.  And through the Food Recovery Challenge, participating organizations have the opportunity to receive national recognition for their outstanding Challenge achievements.

Take the Food Recovery Challenge and together – let’s take a bite out of food waste!

To join us and to learn more – go to www.epa.gov/foodrecoverychallenge

The new changes include:

• revisions to the food waste recovery hierarchy to clarify the placement of Anaerobic Digesters (they live in the composting tier of the hierarchy),
• additional resources and links
• clarification on Good Samaritan Laws about food waste donation.

I recommend this site as a regular stop for foodservice operators, foodservice consultants, and other industry participants.  If you have never been, or haven’t seen the new updates, make a point to visit!

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

From the study:

The calculated progressive increase of food waste suggests that the US obesity epidemic has been the result of a ‘‘push effect’’ of increased food availability and marketing with Americans being unable to match their food intake with the increased supply of cheap, readily available food. Thus, addressing the oversupply of food energy in the US may help curb the obesity epidemic as well as decrease food waste, which has profound environmental consequences.

After looking at how much total food was produced in the U.S., and how much was converted metabolically into weight gain, the researchers were able to determine how much food was leftover as waste (based on calories produced).

The figure was 40%.

This is a big number – it represents massive resource consumption, great inefficiency, and environmental loss. 

For chefs and managers, what is the takeaway?

That we have a food system producing tons of food we don’t use in America and - if operators could waste less by tracking food waste and preventing it - we would have more food dollars available to invest in quality and variety.   Moreover, the availability of excess food may be a contributor to the obesity epidemic in America.

For so many reasons, working to prevent and minimize food waste is the right approach!

VA Senior Sustainability Officer James M. Sullivan praised staff as “an excellent example to other VA facilities on how to employ innovative waste reduction strategies.”

MVAMC’s Chief of Nutrition and Food Service Barbara Hartman says that “Receiving this award recognizes and validates the importance of proper food waste management to the environment.”

View the entire notice at: www.leanpath.com/nwsltr/VA_Award.pdf

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

We are passionate about food waste reduction!  We like to share our experiences, hints and tips with all of you.  Hopefully you can use these tools to reduce food waste in your operation.  We would like to share a new tool with you.  It’s a calculator that can help you learn about the different types of food waste that are created in your operation.  Be sure to select the type of operation from the drop down box (grocery, hospital, restaurant, college, etc.)  The EPA has created this food waste calculator and it looks great!

The calculator estimates the cost competitiveness of alternatives to food waste disposal, including source reduction, donation, composting, and recycling of yellow grease. Specifically, the calculator: Develops an alternative food waste management scenario based on: Your waste profile; Availability of diversion methods; and Preferences, and Compares cost estimates for a disposal versus an alternative scenario. The Calculator demonstrates that environmentally and socially responsible food waste management is cost-effective for many facilities and waste streams.

The calculator is based on a simple excel file and is VERY easy to use.  You type in a few numbers based on your food purchases, disposal costs, etc. and the calculated results show up on a separate tab.  I especially like two tabs – Cost Graphs (visuals are always helpful) and Composting Environmental Benefits (which shows a breakdown of various impacts from your composting).

After you have the results – you can determine which disposal/diversion/reduction method will save you the most money and have the biggest helpful impact on the environment.

To access the calculator click on the direct link:  http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/organics/food/fd-tool.htm Or go to the EPA main website:  www.epa.gov and search for ]]> http://blog.leanpath.com/2009/10/new-food-waste-calculator/feed/ 0 http://blog.leanpath.com/2009/08/wastewise-and-re-trac/ http://blog.leanpath.com/2009/08/wastewise-and-re-trac/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:49:36 +0000 Jennifer Hancox http://blog.leanpath.com/?p=497 Hey folks!

Just attended a good training webinar for the NEW Re-Trac program from WasteWise.  Re-Trac is a great program that can be used by any type of operation to “collect, organize, analyze and report” all recycling and waste.  Re-Trac is a web-based system that allows an operator to track many different types of waste:  Municipal/Solid Waste, Buy/Manufactured recycled product and several others.  Everything type of waste is tracked from wood, paper products, computers, batteries, to just about anything else.  (They also include “food” as a category – but it is meant for “food” as a general group.  To get very detailed food waste information – you will need a dedicated tracking system, either manual tracking or automated tracking like LeanPath’s systems.)

First you have to join WasteWise and they will give you access to the Re-Trac website.  Throughout the year simply log on to the site and type in the type of waste, measured in pounds or tonnes and what happened to the waste – source reduced, recycled, incinerated, or landfill.  The data gets saved – you get great reports – the EPA/WasteWise team gets real data to use in their studies.

By the way – one of the reports is just amazing!  The report equates the amount of product recycled/reduced/composted to number of trees saved (or pounds of Carbon reduced, or…).  Just a really super idea.  It’s something you can print and share with your staff to validate all their hard work at recycling and source reduction.

Check it out:  Waste Wise http://www.epa.gov/waste/partnerships/wastewise/index.htm