Food Waste Reduction Considerations For Businesses

7 February 2023

Without a proper plan for dealing with the food sold or used by your business, it's possible your business can contribute to food waste, a global problem. Dealing with food waste properly and efficiently isn't just the right thing to do, it's a way to save on costs and present your business in a good light to the local, national, and even global community. 

What Is Food Waste? 

The term food waste stands for edible food that purposefully goes into the trash rather than toward human consumption. You may also see the term food loss, which typically means losing viable food before it reaches its intended destination, like grain rotting away in a silo or foodstuffs spoiling before processing.

Your business may throw away a lot of viable food as just a part of day-to-day business. Some examples of food waste can include:

• Buying too much food, consuming only a small portion, and discarding the rest.
• Throwing away uneaten food each day.
• Throwing away purchased food that doesn't sell within a given time.
• Trashing food for purely cosmetic reasons.

Food waste occurs in many ways and for many reasons. Can you think of ways your business contributes to food waste? You may find some surprising sources of it with an audit of how your business handles food.

An audit can also reveal how that food waste also affects the bottom line of your business. Consider that food that goes to waste also represents wasted money. You will have to contend with the costs associated with:

• Purchasing food that will go directly to the trash
• Disposing of the food or letting the food take up your valuable garbage bin space
• The labor involved with procuring, inventorying, preparing, or serving food destined for the garbage

 If you throw away a lot of good food frequently, those losses can add up quickly.

How Any Business Can Reduce Food Waste

You can reduce food waste in your business in several ways. The nature of your business will dictate what you can and can't do. However, some general food waste reduction methods can include:

• Don't overbuy the foods that go to waste the most.
• Reduce portions of foods that often go to the trash mostly uneaten.
• Organize and store food properly to get the most longevity out of it.
• Repurpose foods instead of throwing them out whenever possible.

You can also donate unused food to food banks and organizations that can make very good use of it. Other ways to donate food that you would otherwise toss can include giving it to animal shelters as feed or places that can use it as compost and fertilizer.

When you reduce food waste at your business, you're adding value to your company, helping to improve a global problem, and showing your community that you care. If in doubt about food waste management, speak to a professional waste management service about the options available to your business when it comes to developing a plan for responsible food waste reduction and disposal.

For more info, contact waste management services.