Food Waste Intelligence

Earlier this month I attended the Feeding America food recovery summit held in Washington, D.C. Since I focus on food waste prevention, I’m sometimes asked if there’s tension emerging between prevention and recovery. After all, if we prevent food waste from happening, doesn’t food recovery lose out?

Editor’s Note: Victoria Rehkugler is a new Trainer/Coach at LeanPath. Based out of New York, she brings a passion for efficiency and resourcefulness to everything she does. She looks forward to continuing her mission of wastelessness by helping LeanPath clients maximize their food waste reduction results. Isn't It Fun to Work With Food? I’ve always found great pleasure and entertainment in the dining experience and sharing food with others. Like many people, that sentiment is what first connected me to the hospitality and foodservice ...

In case you missed it, there was big news in food waste this month.

One of the myths we often hear in foodservice related to food waste is that if you have food waste, it means that a chef or manager isn’t doing his/her job (check out our full food waste myths post here). And while reducing food waste certainly needs to be on the management agenda, solving food waste doesn’t come from a management edict or better IT, solving food waste is about shaping behaviors.

In the United States, every day we throw away enough food to fill the Rose Bowl Stadium while at the same time one in six Americans face hunger. How can we turn these troubling statistics around? While there is no one solution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Food Recovery Hierarchy (Figure 1) is a good place to start. Each level of the hierarchy has unique benefits, but this guide will focus on the second level from the top: feeding hungry people, or food donation.