FOCUS CATERING
chefs to take a picture of the weighed waste
food. All the data is then uploaded to an online
dashboard, where the information can be
monitored and compared to look for trends
in food waste. In trials, using these systems is
proven to reduce avoidable food waste by 23
per cent and help lower costs. If the evidence is
right before your eyes, you will do what you can
to rectify it.”
FM Lucy Hind, Head of Property at Barnsley
Council, adds that it’s essential there is open
dialogue between clients and contractors.
Discussions, she advises, “should not just be
around food as the item, but the impacts of the
delivery of food and the way food is packaged,
all of which equate to the waste conundrum.”
Simone Fenton-Jarvis has some key tips for
FMs:
Involve the clients and stakeholders
– hold interactive workshops
and include di erent levels
of the organisation.
Communicate your
company stance, the
reasons why, the
impact and how it
benefits them.
Engage – collect
regular feedback
and then feedback
to your clients and
stakeholders the
levels of waste versus
employee experience.
Says Mistry: “I’d like to start
with the fact that the UK food service
industry wastes one million tonnes of food
every year, enough to fill the Shard 11 times
over. The scale is vast. One of the United
Nations’ sustainable development goals is the
reduction of food waste, and that’s because
it feeds back into food inequality. There are
people going hungry across the world, even
though the world produces enough to feed
everyone. If we created less waste, there would
be more food available at fair prices for those
30 FEBRUARY 2020
who go hungry.
“The other side to the
environmental factor
is that food that goes
into landfill degrades
and produces methane,
a greenhouse gas,
which then adds to global
warming. The alternative is
to put that food into anaerobic
digestion and produce energy from
it. However, reducing waste is a far better
option than recycling it.”
Biggs agrees that while reducing food
waste is the most important step, what
happens to the waste is another. With the
government’s ambition to eliminate food
waste being sent to landfill by 2030(5), this
should not be viewed as a CSR benefit, but
rather a call for action.
“However,” he cautions, “when it comes
to removing food waste, part of the
challenge can be budget. We all know food
waste should never be sent to landfill,
but alternatives can be costly. Aside from
composting, the eco-friendliest way of
disposing of food waste is through anaerobic
digestion (AD), which involves the use of
microorganisms to break down waste in
an enclosed area. The methane emitted is
then collected and used to create biogas,
which can help generate electricity or heat.
With this in mind, food waste can be a great
source of renewable energy.
“However, let’s not forget that the cost
of removing waste is typically done by
weight, so the less waste produced the
more a ordable it becomes to dispose of.
Ensuring a strict policy of segregation of
food waste will inevitably lower the weight
and potentially make it more a ordable for
an organisation to do.”
IMPLEMENTING A POLICY
Svab says that prevention is a key step in
addressing food waste, so begin by looking at
ways of preventing unnecessary food waste
in the first place. “With 30 per cent of crops
never leaving farms because they don’t look
perfect or are the wrong size, a couple of
years ago Sodexo partnered with Waste Knot
– an organisation committed to connecting
businesses with surplus food.
“Through Waste Knot we have built a
relationship with Ferryfast, a co-operative of
farmers in Worcestershire and successfully
implemented Wasteful to Tasteful, a scheme
where our catering teams can order boxes of
fruit and vegetables which would otherwise
have been wasted. Just over a year in and
230-plus of our catering sites are receiving
the boxes on a weekly basis, which has saved
almost 130 tonnes of fruit and vegetables
which would otherwise have gone to waste.
“This scheme not only helps prevent food
waste at farm level but enables and inspires
our chefs to create more plant-based dishes,
which are growing in popularity as more and
more people are adopting a flexitarian diet.”
Hind advises that FMs and their caterers
“start small and get creative. Early adoption
with a small-scale pilot allows caterers to
trial solutions and develop the scope of a
programme over time, from buying local and
menus according to seasons, giving adequate
time for peer learning, to engagement and
results production. This allows catering
The other side to the
environmental factor is that food
that goes into landfi ll degrades
and produces methane, a
greenhouse gas, which then
adds to global warming.”