Food Waste Intelligence

In my years coaching chefs on how to prevent food waste, again and again I see three food items being wasted when they should have been repurposed. A lot of chefs just aren’t sure what to do with them. The big three are vegetable trim (broccoli stems, cauliflower cores, carrot peels, onions skins, etc.), fruits (whole and trim), and starches (rice, beans, potatoes, grains). It’s probably not a coincidence that none of these are high-priced proteins, which can sometimes be the only focus of a kitchen’s food waste prevention effort. To ...

At a Royal Society gala in London January 30, Leanpath received the 12th annual Rushlight Environmental Management Award, one of the evening’s overall prizes for the most significant innovation in sustainable technology among 28 category winners. Leanpath also won in the category of Sustainability Initiative for work in expanding food waste prevention globally.

One of the biggest sources of food waste is trim waste from fruits, vegetables and meats. Some trim waste is inevitable. For that, try to repurpose using my guide to repurpose commonly wasted foods. But some trim waste is created because of poor knife skills: a quarter of a bell pepper is left on top, meat comes off when fat is trimmed. Teaching proper knife skills is critical. Find out the chef on your team who is best with knives and have him or her give a tutorial. Short of that, we've collected some great knife skills videos to he...

How do we feed a growing population without destroying the planet? A comprehensive new report attempts to answer that question and in doing so draws a clear connection between feeding the globe a healthy diet and the imperative to reduce food waste.

It can be hard to picture something that isn't there. And that's exactly what food waste prevention creates: food waste that is not there anymore. It's why prevention is such a powerful solution. Other options for dealing with food waste - like diversion to compost or donations - have their place, but they only deal with food waste after it is created, after you've incurred their cost, and after it's had substantial environmental impact. Using Leanpath's food waste data, we've created a visual to help you "see" prevention.