Food Waste Intelligence

Three United States federal agencies have released the National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics. In line with the recently released U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Wasted Food Scale, the strategy prioritizes food waste prevention–stopping food waste from being created to begin with–which is the solution Leanpath provides to the foodservice industry.

This is the first interagency national strategy that lays out a path for the United States to meet its national goal to halve food loss and waste by 2030.To help advance progress toward this goal, the Biden-Harris Administration has invested more than $200 million to reduce food loss and waste.

Leanpath CEO and founder Andrew Shakman recently hosted a webinar on the future of food waste prevention and how operators must adapt to that changing landscape.

“When we look to the future,” says Shakman, “we think that food waste action is going to be more required by law and integrated into everyday practice in the world's kitchens rather than being a special activity in an innovation context. It’s going to be the norm of how we think and work.”

Here are 5 ways foodservice operations must adapt:

Uniworld Boutique River Cruises rolled out Leanpath across its full fleet of 11 ships in 2023 and has already seen a 36 percent reduction in food waste.

But the cruise line is finding even more value in its food waste measurement and prevention by showcasing their work with Leanpath to guests in a special “Progressive Dinner” series (pictured).

Here’s how Uniworld explains it in their recently released 2023 Impact Report:

East Carolina University Medical Center’s Beaufort Hospital is a 142-bed healthcare campus in Washington, North Carolina, USA. Food and nutrition services are operated by Sodexo and overseen by General Manager Denise M. Hewitt and Executive Chef John Jacob Phillips (above at his Leanpath Tracker). 

The team has successfully reduced its kitchen waste by 53 percent since implementing the  Leanpath program in 2020. Expanding on that success, beginning in 2023, they started using their program to track plate waste from patient trays, and within months they have seen a reduction in plate waste of 24 percent.

In 2018, Sodexo announced the largest deployment of automated food waste prevention technology in the world, with the plan to roll out WasteWatch powered by Leanpath at 3,000 of its sites worldwide, with the goal of cutting its food waste in half by 2025.

To achieve this level of impact requires strong leadership at a regional level. 

To learn more about what it takes to drive regional commitment and results, we spoke with Sodexo’s Regional Project Manager and Leanpath Champion for the Middle East and Africa, Umesh Jaiswar. Umesh oversees the rollout and success of WasteWatch Powered by Leanpath in the region. WWxLP, as it’s known, is the Sodexo-branded food waste prevention program using Leanpath technology.