Guide to Reducing Food Waste

Feeding America estimates that in the United States, 108 billion pounds of food is thrown away annually. Breaking down where food is wasted shows that 39% is from homes, while 61% of this waste is from commercial sources.


This annual waste accumulates to a monetary value of more than $408 billion, which is another reason why it’s so important to analyze our relationship with food at home and within the food industry itself.

Reducing Food Waste at Home

Western Elite is a company committed to proper waste disposal and recycling. Their blog has several tips for reducing food waste as a home chef, many of which are expanded upon here.


Even the casual meal maker at home can up their game when it comes to reducing how much food gets thrown away each day. 

Mindful Meal Planning

Have you ever strolled the aisles at the grocery store and randomly dropped items into your cart? Doing so can result in food waste, as you don't have a game plan in mind for the food you’re purchasing. The produce you selected with the best of intentions gets left in the fridge, while pantry items find themselves lost with other staples that are overlooked for convenient to-go dinners.


To avoid tossing your groceries in the trash each week, plan not just one meal for an ingredient, but several. When you get that fresh, rotisserie chicken at the beginning of the week, go ahead and pick it clean on the first night. Store the leftover meat for fajitas or a pot pie later in the week.


There are websites and apps available that can help you piece together pantry items so nothing goes to waste.

Use the Scraps

Before you scrape peels, eggshells, or trimmings into the trash, consider composting them instead. Or, feed them to our backyard chickens or bunnies. Food waste in landfills increases methane production, so if you can compost or use your food scraps at home, it’s better for the environment.


Uses for Food Scraps


  • Vegetable stock - boil peels and skins

  • Bake croutons - use stale bread or crusts

  • Make jam - use fruit peels or trimmed tops

  • Infuse liquids - add zest, peels, or slices to olive oil or water

  • Grow starts - use cuttings to create plant starts in pots


What You CAN Compost


  • Fruit and vegetable scraps

  • Grains

  • Coffee grounds

  • Shredded paper products


What to Keep OUT of Your Compost


  • Meat products

  • Dairy products

  • Liquid (water, juice, tea, coffee, soda, etc…)

  • Wrappers

  • Plastic

Store Overstock

If you take advantage of case lot sales or get a good haul at the farmer’s market, it’s important to know how to store your food. Invest in an extra freezer for produce, meat, and dairy that you want to keep on hand without it spoiling.


Rotate through your pantry items to use up goods before they expire, and put peeled and chopped overripe fruit in the freezer to use for baking or smoothies. You can also store some produce in water (in the fridge) to prolong shelf life or revive it if it wilts.

Reducing Food Waste in Restaurants

Businesses can also do their part in reducing food waste annually. It usually begins with an audit to identify pain points and how they can be avoided.

Conduct a Waste Audit

If you run a restaurant, it’s important to conduct a waste audit. This not only affects your profits but how you’re impacting the environment as well. A waste audit usually involves sorting through a business's trash to identify what’s being thrown away and why. An auditor will look for the following:


  • Paper waste

  • To-go product waste (containers, cups, cutlery)

  • Produce

  • Meat

  • Plastics

  • Servingware/flatware

  • Foil (or other containers used for storing food)

 

These items will be weighed and the data will be analyzed to estimate how much waste is produced from each category per year. The category that weighs the most should be the first one addressed.

Order Smart

Just like a home chef who meals plans to reduce food waste, restaurants should order based on what’s in season, and what’s been popular on the menu. If a waste audit indicates that one food item is being thrown away more than another, the ordering and the menu should reflect that information. Keeping a handle on inventory, and what customers are demanding should help restaurants order to par.


First-In First-Out (FIFO)

Many restaurants utilize the FIFO method to manage their inventory. Whether it’s done manually or via software, it means rotating inventory to ensure that whatever came in first gets used first. New shipments should be stored behind previous shipments to ensure the older items get used first.


ORDER LOCAL TO REDUCE FOOD WASTE

Did you know that sourcing ingredients locally also helps reduce food waste? Since the food spends less time in transit, it avoids the risk of spoiling before reaching its destination. That’s also a benefit for the environment, as shipping something locally uses fewer resources than sourcing it farther from home. Sourcing food locally is not only a good practice environmentally, but it can be a big draw for customers. 


Wagyu beef, for example, is known for being world-class meat thanks to its fat content. Sourcing it locally from a company such as Bear Lake Beef in Northern Utah ensures you’re getting a high-quality product from a source that prides itself on the farm-to-table connection.

Partner Up

There are programs that restaurants can partner with to ensure food waste is disposed of in responsible ways. Sometimes it’s not possible to reduce waste, so the next best step may be repurposing food scraps or uneaten food. Scraps could be composted, and uneaten food could be donated to food banks. Some restaurants even donate food waste to farmers to feed animals, or they offload used cooking oil to companies that turn it into biofuel.

Adjust Portion Sizes

If restaurants avoid giving customers oversized portions, less food will be wasted as a result. Consistent portioning of food is crucial toward reducing how much food is thrown away each day.

Use it Up, Wear it Out

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a common motto was “Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make Do, or Do Without.” This was encouragement for people to get the most they could out of what they had, or figure out a way to get by without something.


In a restaurant, it’s a good motto to live by, as it can pertain to using up inventory in creative ways throughout the week. Just like a home cook who’s meal planning, restaurants should look for ways that food stock can be used in multiple dishes. Run specials to sell unused foods before they have a chance to spoil, whether it’s a usual dish or something new to push the inventory.


Some of these changes may be harder than others to implement at home or in the food industry, but they’re worth the effort. Reducing food waste conserves resources, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and can help sustain the earth for future generations.