Cutting Down on Food Waste Means Changing our Behaviors

For Sodexo, the fight against food waste is part of our daily routine. Every year we also try to shed more light on this issue when we bring together our clients, employees and consumers across nearly 50 countries around what we call “WasteLESS Week”.

Today 30% of food produced for human consumption globally is wasted. This is one of the biggest scandals of our time if you consider the 815 million people suffering from hunger around the world. And the environmental front is equally troubling: if food waste were a country today, it would be the third largest carbon emitter after the USA and China. 

What is behind the issue? I believe that food has lost its perceived value. Progress in food production and distribution, right from the farm to the table, has reduced global poverty, hunger, and undernutrition all over the world. Yet, as the middle class and living standards have risen in many countries, we have also become accustomed to the availability, choice and affordability of food, which leads many of us to consciously, but often unintentionally, waste a lot across every link of the value chain. This was unthinkable 50 years ago.

The good news is that digital and data can now help to identify actions to change behavior, from our kitchens right to what consumers leave on their plates.

During WasteLESS Week in the United States, I had the chance to visit Rollins College, which has been a Sodexo client for more than 47 years. Rollins College recently adopted our unique food waste prevention program called WasteWatch. This program used digital weighing technology from LeanPath, the world leader in digital waste tracking systems. The results are compelling: In only 6 weeks since the program was launched, our team has already reduced waste by 27%.

Yet behind these encouraging figures lies the struggle our teams face every day to measure waste. For example, each employee needs to interrupt their work to take the time to weigh the discarded food, enter the data, and track food wasted both in the kitchen and on plates. This step is paramount because it is only with collected data that our chefs and site managers can adjust menus and make supply choices according to the actual consumption of food.

Everywhere our teams set up rituals and recognition mechanisms in order to facilitate mobilization. In Orlando, for example, I attended a weekly ceremony held by our chef, Gustavo, to celebrate the waste avoided over the previous week and to congratulate the team members who made the biggest contributions.

A systematic approach to weighing in order to measure the magnitude of waste and changing behaviors are necessary steps, but are far from sufficient. We are also adopting certain practices identified in the “Roadmap to Reduce FoodWaste” by ReFed, one of the main organizations committed to the fight against food waste. Serving appropriate portions is one example; another is cooking food to order toward the end of the meal service instead of keeping displays stacked to the brim with food that will be thrown away at closing time. In partnership with our clients, we also develop awareness campaigns among our consumers – for example, anti-waste missions in schools and colleges in France.

Lastly, we are inspired by the initiatives of great chefs such as Thierry Marx and Frédéric Anton, with whom we partnered to operate the Eiffel Tower restaurants. These include recipes using food scraps and leftovers, social acceptance of “ugly” food such as oddly shaped fruit and vegetables, and their commitment to feed the hungry.

For us, wasting less is an opportunity to inspire creativity and new approaches in our behaviors and our relationship with food.