Tackling Food Waste With Intelligence: A Practical Food Guide

In countries like Canada, Mexico and the United States, food waste is a significant environmental issue that requires urgent action from individuals, businesses, and governments. But, what does action look like?

Guest post by Spencer Gordon, Digital Marketing Manager of Scout Environmental

Here in Canada, we generate around 13 million tonnes of food waste every year (that’s 396 kilograms per capita). Researchers, along with the general public, are starting to understand that all this waste represents an environmental, economic, and social catastrophe — and one that’s largely avoidable. Last month, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation published a publicly available and thoroughly practical guide to help us understand why — and how — we can reduce food loss and waste.

Establishing Seven Modules for Food Waste Management

Why and How to Measure Food Loss and Waste: A Practical Guide was prepared by Brian Lipinski and Austin Clowes for the Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation, and drew upon the knowledge of a 12-person expert panel and another 17 contributors. The 60-page resource breaks food loss and waste (shortened to the acronym FLW) into seven broad modules:

• Why measure FLW?
• The business case for FLW reduction
• Managing change with FLW reduction initiatives
• Setting scope and determining definitions for FLW
• Finding the root causes of FLW in your organization
• Selecting key performance indicators and identifying impacts
• Finding sector-specific guidance and implementing appropriate measurement methods

Most people can understand the why behind measuring and reducing food waste. It’s bad for business and the bottom line. It’s a waste of resources and a major contributor of greenhouse gases. And in a world of starving or hungry people, egregious food waste is a major indictment of our values. Thus, the guidebook runs readers through a hierarchy of source reduction (moving from prevention as the ideal, and landfills and incinerators as the least optimal choice), and reminds readers of the risks — to our environment, communities, and businesses — for not acting now.

Making the Business Case for Reducing Food Loss and Waste

The authors establish practical steps for managers seeking to establish the operational and reputational benefits of taking action. This involves working out how much FLW is costing your company and articulating the potential benefits. Knowing that FLW payback periods are often less than one year, and that action can lead to increased efficiency, additional revenue, as well as lower management, purchasing, and collection costs, can help advocates set the stage for the next step: managing change.

Overcoming Typical Forms of Resistance

FLW measurement isn’t just about data and figures, but about the people producing the waste. In other words, if you’re trying to change the way things run, you have to challenge key assumptions — and prepare for resistance. Within any institution, people are going to find reasons to avoid taking action, and some are quite legitimate. So, the guide provides sample responses to common objections, such as, “We don’t waste any food!” or “We have too much else going on!” or, and most insidiously, “It’s not worth the cost!”

Reporting Food Loss and Waste Properly

It’s all about setting a crystal clear scope! In other words, what are you quantifying and how are you going to do it? The guide suggests using the Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting Standard for public reporting to ensure accuracy of process. It shows how to set a base-year, a time frame, clear definitions of materials, the ultimate destination of your food waste, and the boundary (or scope) of your activities. What will you consider in your measurements? What type of food are you focusing on? What is a valid redistribution of food, to your organization? This is all to ensure that the hard work of food loss reduction is clear, accurate, and available to other businesses, policymakers, stakeholders, and the public.

Finding the Root Causes of Food Waste

Determining root causes of FLW can also help us dig ever deeper into the underlying motivations for waste and poor diversion rates — it strikes at the why behind what is being lost. Why are carrots spoiling in your retail-based cafeterias? Over-ordering? Faulty refrigeration systems? Staff apathy or mismanagement? Poor training? Conversely, why would multi-unit high-rise residents be disposing of organic refuse in garbage bins instead of diverting items properly? Is there a lack of available chutes, education, or signage? Are there cultural or linguistic barriers? Have the benefits or incentives not been clearly explained to residents? Learning the causes of FLW, as well as how to track them, will help you tailor actions to solve them.

Selecting Key Performance Indicators

What impacts should you track? The guide helpfully explains how and where action can focus. Environmental impacts span greenhouse gases, water, land, energy, and fertilizer use, and biodiversity and conservation efforts. Financial impacts involve purchasing, labour, redistribution, and several other important costs of doing business. The social impacts, as indicated, can help municipalities and corporations improve community health and well-being and improve or totally re-make their reputations. Of course, while all of these factors are valuable, it might make more sense for your project or team to focus on one over another.

Implementing Sector-Specific Measurement Tools

Finally, the guide then gives specific guidance for the following sectors: primary production; processing and manufacturing; distribution; retail; food services/institutions; households (and high-rises!); and whole supply chain approaches. For each sector, it suggests the most effective means of gathering data (from direct measurements, waste composition analyses, proxy data and records, to interviews and diaries), and includes the variable levels of accuracy, the resources needed, and how easy or difficult it is to track causes and processes over time. Case studies from the World Wildlife Fund, Byblos Bakery, the Mexican Transport Institute, Delhaize America, Sodexho, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and major municipalities show how the tools can be tailored and applied to achieve incredible results.

For committed organizations, this is a must-read section and will provide granular insight and science-backed techniques to your FLW programs.

Ending Food Waste in Canada

According to a recent study funded largely by the Walmart Foundation, “58% of Canadian food production is wasted,” and “a solid one-third of the waste — more than 11 million tonnes — could be recovered.”

It’s time we acted on these embarrassing figures. From our perspective, the Practical Guide is a powerful and instructive resource and will help you kick-start a successful waste management plan in your town, community, or company.

Information in this post was gathered from:

CEC. 2019. Why and How to Measure Food Loss and Waste: A Practical Guide. Montreal, Canada: Commission for Environmental Cooperation. 60 pp.

This story originally appeared on the Scout Environmental blog, The Buzz

The statements and opinions represented in CEC Medium articles are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the positions or views of the CEC or the governments of Canada, Mexico, or the United States.