Food Waste Intelligence

Consumer awareness of the food waste crisis has more than doubled in the past two years as rising food prices, supply chain challenges, the pandemic, and sustainability concerns are impacting consumer behavior, a new report finds. The report by Capgemini Research Institute found that 72 percent of consumers are aware of their food waste as compared to 33 percent of consumers before 2020.

Six years ago, recognizing the need to drive increased focus on the global food waste challenge, Leanpath partner Compass Group launched an educational campaign designating the last Wednesday in April as Stop Food Waste Day. Coming just days after Earth Day–with this year’s theme of “Invest in our Planet”–the timing couldn’t be better, because reducing food waste is one of the single most effective levers that the world has to transform the food system. It also is key to accelerate progress toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal...

#1: How Mount Holyoke College used food waste tracking to quickly adapt to COVID-19 changes As we all adjusted to the challenges of COVID-19, something notable rose to the surface in foodservice: measuring food waste was no longer just a way to cut costs and be more efficient, it became a key tool for learning and adapting to the new normal. What a kitchen wastes is one of the few real-time data points it can use to understand what's working and what's not. Our top blog post of the year took a deep dive into how Mount Holyoke, a women...

The challenges faced by the foodservice industry in 2021–rising food and labor costs and disrupted supply chains–put a fine point on the need to prevent food waste and its financial burden. The growing body of evidence connecting food waste and climate change created even more urgency for foodservice organizations. Working with those organizations in over 40 countries, Leanpath and its partners prevented 14 million pounds of food from going to waste, bringing the total impact since 2004–when Leanpath introduced food waste prevention s...

It’s clear that an organization is doing pioneering work in the food system when the President and the Vice President come to participate, as occurred at DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) just before Thanksgiving. And we agree. Leanpath has been proud to partner with DCCK for the past three years through our Leanpath 12.3 initiative, supporting the organization’s transformative work to address hunger and poverty through job training and job creation since its founding by Robert Egger over 30 years ago (read more about DCCK’s history here). We...