Food Waste Intelligence

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) recently released a comprehensive report on the state of food loss and waste in Canada, Mexico and the United States developed through the CEC’s North American Initiative on Food Waste Reduction and Recovery. Characterization and Management of Food Loss and Waste in North America documents adverse socio-economic and environmental impacts of food loss and waste, and actions that the industrial, commercial, institutional, government and nongovernmental sectors can implement to mitigate ...

We believe in a big-tent philosophy when it comes to dealing with food waste. There’s room for everybody who has a good idea. We are focused on prevention (aka source reduction). That is, preventing food waste from happening to begin with so kitchens avoid the financial cost of buying food they’ll just throw away, and in turn avoid contributing to the environmental impact of wasted food (CO2 emissions, wasted water, poor land use, etc).

Hard to believe that it has been a year since I hung up my toque and became the World’s First Food Waste Fighting Chef here at LeanPath. Over the past year, it has been a deep dive into learning all I can about the global scale of food waste. The problem is big--really big--and we need to teach, train, inspire and help all those out there on the front line every day to do their part to combat this global crisis. It’s interesting: the more I teach, the more I learn. Most of my learning has come from talking with the chefs that utilize ...

ReFED, the U.S.-based nonprofit working to reduce the nation’s food waste, just released two new Food Waste Action Guides to help restaurants and foodservice providers develop waste reduction plans.

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.”