Food Waste Focus

The National Restaurant Association and Elemental Impact released the following news about the expansion of Atlanta’s Zero Waste Zone to a national foodservice effort: ZERO WASTE ZONES’ SECOND ANNIVERSARY HIGHLIGHTED BY COLLABORATIONS WITH THE NATIONAL RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION AND WASTE MANAGEMENT ATLANTA—Feb. 23, 2011 — In 2009, one of the nation’s and the Southeast’s first Zero [...]

NPR recently ran a story titled, “Gleaning: A Harvest for The Needy by Fighting Waste“.   The article describes how modern agriculture leaves 96 Billion pounds of food in fields and notes that “gleaners” are starting to organize to harvest and provide it to those in need.  This is a great thing. It also raises a [...]

Toque Magazine, an online resource for culinary professionals focused on “what’s happening in the kitchen,”  just published a good overview article on food waste. The author is journalist Laurie Wiegler and the piece is titled “Whittling Away at Food Waste.“   It covers a range of contributing factors that cause food waste in restaurants.  It also [...]

The New York Times discussed residential food waste today in the “Well” column by Tara Parker-Pope in the Health section: Why should we care about food waste? For starters, it’s expensive. Citing various studies, including one at the University of Arizona called the Garbage Project that tracked home food waste for three decades, [Author Jonathan] [...]

The US EPA will be hosting a Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) Web Academy devoted to food waste on Thursday, November 18,  2010 @ 1:00-2:30 PM (Eastern Time).  Here is the information: 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 [...]

On October 7th, the White House Council on Environmental Quality announced the eight winners of the 2010 GreenGov Presidential Awards. The winner in the “Good Neighbor” category was the Nutrition and Food Services Team at the VA Medical Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  They were recognized for the totality of their sustainability efforts, which include [...]

Earlier this year, PepsiCo took a bold leap forward by introducing the first compostable chip bag for its Sun Chips brand.  It was a significant step by a food and beverage leader, and one that many hoped would start a trend leading to more compostable packaging.  Indeed, PepsiCo had done extensive research to get its [...]

Food Waste Tracking Software Introduced for Restaurants & Foodservice Operations of All Sizes LeanPath, Inc. Announces Software Solution for Daily Tracking of Food Waste Portland, Ore. – LeanPath® proudly announces the introduction of WasteLOGGER, a software solution for food waste tracking that helps any restaurant, hotel, caterer, or foodservice operation prevent, minimize and avoid pre-consumer [...]

Compostable foodservice disposables (such as bagasse plates, PLA cups, potato cutlery, etc.) have received a lot of operator attention in recent years. However, one of the foodservice sectors that has been slower to embrace these products is healthcare foodservice. Why is the case? Perhaps one reason is that at least 30% of the meal volume [...]

Every year a few key themes emerge at National Restaurant Show despite the massive scale of the event. While “green” topics have been featured for several years, this was the first year that the discussion in Chicago evolved from a product-centered conversation (compostable disposables, organic foods, etc.) to focus on green operations.  The reality is [...]