Food Waste Intelligence

When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, all food waste is not equal. Based on its GHG footprint, meat waste contributes the largest amount of emissions by weight. Waste a little bit of beef, contribute a lot of GHGs. But as a recent World Resources Institute report shows, vegetables are actually the biggest contributor to emissions behind beef and seafood, simply because of the sheer volume of vegetables wasted.

Chef Ann Cooper, Director of Nutrition Services for Boulder Valley School District, in Colorado, USA, and founder of the Chef Ann Foundation has worked with Leanpath to reduce food waste across the district. We also recently collaborated on a new curriculum teaching the importance of food waste prevention to elementary school students.

Staff engagement in food waste prevention pays big dividends. When staff are engaged in tracking food waste, a kitchen gets more complete data, which provides greater insight into what a kitchen is wasting and why. But staff engagement in a mission-driven effort like food waste prevention also leads to better retention and job satisfaction.

We’ve just returned from ReFED’s 2019 Food Waste Summit in San Francisco, where we were excited to participate with many long-time partners and colleagues on the challenge of advancing food waste reduction at scale in accordance with Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals - which calls for cutting global food waste in half by 2030.

The Hilton San Diego Bayfront, a 1,190-room luxury hotel on the city’s waterfront, has been tracking food waste with Leanpath for only five months, but has already seen a dramatic reduction in food waste: a 50% drop in waste by weight and 51% drop by waste value.