Experts in the food industry are thinking a lot about trash these days.
Food waste has been a chronic problem for restaurants and grocery stores — with millions of tons being lost along the way as crops are hauled, stored and prepared on hectic restaurant assembly lines. But the historically high price of commodities is making it an even bigger drag on the bottom line.
Restaurants, colleges, hospitals and other institutions are compensating for the rising costs of waste in novel ways. Some are tracking their trash with software systems, making food in smaller batches or trying to compost and cut down on trash-hauling costs.
“We have all come to work with this big elephant in the middle of the kitchen, and the elephant is this ‘it’s OK to waste’ belief system,” said Andrew Shackman, president of LeanPath Inc., a company that helps restaurants cut food waste.
Big, unnecessary costs
Roughly 30 percent of food in the U.S. goes to waste, costing some $48 billion annually, according to a Stockholm Water Institute study released this summer. A 2004 University of Arizona study put the total higher, estimating that 40 percent to 50 percent of U.S. food is wasted.
Wholesale food costs have risen more than 8 percent this year, the biggest jump in decades, according to the National Restaurant Association.
While that makes it more expensive to toss food out, Shackman said there’s no easy answer for cutting back on waste because each kitchen is run so differently. That means institutions are devising their own solutions.
Freshman students at Virginia Tech University were surprised this year when they entered two of the school’s biggest dining halls to find there weren’t any cafeteria trays. The school got rid of the trays to cut down on leftovers going into the trash.
No trays, less tossed
Getting rid of trays has cut food waste by 38 percent at the cafeterias, said Denny Cochrane, manager of Virginia Tech’s sustainability program. Before the program began, students often grabbed whatever looked good at the buffet, only to find that their eyes were bigger than their stomachs, he said.
That same phenomenon often happens at Oregon’s Portland International Airport. Busy travelers often discard half-eaten meals into trash cans, adding dozens of tons of waste that the airport must pay the city to haul away.
Now the airport is ramping up a 3-year-old program to install food-only trash cans. The food waste is collected in biodegradable bags and given to the city to use as compost, said Stan Jones, aviation environmental compliance manager at the airport.
LeanPath, based in Portland, Ore., sells a software system to track food being tossed out. More than 75 institutions, including hospitals, restaurants and hotels, use the system, which costs roughly $600 a month.
Employees put food waste on a scale and use a touch- screen computer to record what type of food it is. The system calculates the cost and tracks what’s pitched.
Steve Peterson, head chef at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, said he was surprised when he installed the LeanPath system and saw the value of food that was going out the back door. Much of the waste came from sauces, dressings and trimmings.
To cut costs, Peterson decided to reduce serving sizes. He said customers weren’t bothered by the switch, which has helped him trim food waste by between 15 percent and 20 percent over 18 months.
