Food Waste Intelligence

As awareness of the connection between food waste and climate change grows globally, a new report illustrates the environmental impact of China’s food waste in stark detail. More than a quarter of food produced for human consumption in China is lost or wasted each year. The carbon footprint of that waste is equal to the entire emissions of a country the size of the United Kingdom.

Food is thrown away and wasted due to a variety of reasons—overproduction, spoilage, expiration, and so on. At Leanpath, we use "mishandling" as a loss reason to define food that is unfit for consumption and must be thrown away due to improper handling during production. There are a myriad of examples of improper handling of food during production, but let’s focus on the most common occurrences I see in a kitchen and what you can do to avoid them.

The Association of Healthcare Foodservice (AHF) hosted a recent webinar focusing on why sustainability initiatives are so important right now. The webinar panel included Leanpath CEO Andrew Shakman alongside Gina Sadowski, Director for Nutrition, Culinary and Retail at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and Richard Young, Director of Education at the Frontier Energy Foodservice Technology Center. Watch the full webinar here, and check out four key takeaways from the session below.

"By addressing food waste we have an opportunity to address two of the biggest problems facing our people and our planet: climate change and food insecurity." Leanpath Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Shakman on the inspiration behind the B Corp he started, the enormous challenge--and opportunity--of food waste, and the simple change to kitchen culture that allows foodservice organizations to take control of their own food waste. All in 2 minutes.

Hotel and cruise ship guests--like the majority of all consumers--expect brands to practice sustainability. When those sustainability practices include food waste prevention, it opens the opportunity to discuss the issue with guests, to get them involved in the effort and to bring well-deserved attention to your brand's good work. Talking about food waste can be the new talking-about-towel-reuse initiative! To help guide efforts, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently published 5 tips for talking about food waste in its Toolkit For Co...