Food Waste Intelligence

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign installed LeanPath scales in its eight dining halls and catering facility in 2013. Even though it was five years ago, Assistant Director of Dining Thurman Etchison still remembers the surprise of those first few weeks. “The thing that shocked me the most was the dramatic decrease in food waste we saw from the start,” he says. “Over a month’s time, we dropped probably six to seven thousand pounds a week.”

Central Indiana-based Reid Health is an independent, non-profit hospital with a broad and unique foodservice operation. The 207-bed hospital’s central kitchen doesn’t just feed patients and supply it’s cafe -- about 3,600 meals a day -- it also services a local Meals on Wheels, provides meals for the county Head Start program, and feeds children at a local residential facility. On top of that? Internal and external catering.

Hotel buffet lines are notorious waste generators. A recent study by Hyatt Regency Orlando found that guests were eating only about half of the food put out for them, and just 10 to 15 percent of the leftovers could be donated. The rest? Into the garbage with you!

As much as 41,000 tons of edible food that is presently wasted, or roughly 68 million meals, could be diverted to hunger programs across three of the largest cities in the United States, according to an ambitious, first-of-its-kind study from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).