Food Waste Intelligence

LeanPath was invited to particpate and present at the 2016 WasteExpo event in June, a conference and tradeshow showcasing the latest in innovation in the waste management sector. Todd Pendexter, Business Development Manager at LeanPath, represented the food waste prevention sphere at the conference, speaking on trends and technology for reducing food waste in foodservice operations.

One of our core beliefs at LeanPath is that we manage what we measure. It’s at the heart of our mission of making food waste prevention easy: measurement leads to understanding which leads to prevention. When LeanPath was founded in 2004, the concept of measuring food waste was largely a foreign one in many kitchens—that’s why we’re especially excited that last month, the Food Loss & Waste Protocol launched the Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting (FLW) Standard, a first-of-its-kind framework designed to help organizations, nations, regions and other entities around the world report on food loss and waste. 

In the United States, every day we throw away enough food to fill the Rose Bowl Stadium while at the same time one in six Americans face hunger.

How can we turn these troubling statistics around? While there is no one solution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Food Recovery Hierarchy (Figure 1) is a good place to start. Each level of the hierarchy has unique benefits, but this guide will focus on the second level from the top: feeding hungry people, or food donation.

If you had to pay a fee for wasting food, would you cut back on what you throw out? South Korea bet on the answer being a resounding "yes," which is why it is now the country with the world's strictest food waste laws.

When you’ve done all that you can to prevent waste, the next best option on the EPA Food Recovery Hierarchy is feeding hungry people. And when one in six United States citizens receives food assistance, it's as important as ever to do our best to ensure excess edible food makes it to a hungry person instead of a landfill.