However, this food insecurity is not driven by scarcity. “In 2019, more than 35 million Americans were food insecure. There is a great deal more if somebody has to pick it, pack it, ship it, and stock it in a store. There is a certain amount of wastage if you disk a head of lettuce in the field. Loss here has the greatest environmental impact because this is cumulative the further you go down the supply chain. Roughly half of this wastage occurs at the consumption stage (foodservice and household). “Fruits and vegetables are the most commonly wasted foods, followed by dairy and eggs,” the report points out.įLW (food loss and waste: you cannot write a government report without lots of acronyms) accounts for an area of farmland the size of California and New York State combined. Such is the verdict of a report from the Environmental Protection Agency entitled From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. That amounts to somewhere between 492 and 1,032 pounds per person annually (estimates vary widely). What percentage of food is wasted in the U.S.? My family is part of the food wastage problem. Get in touch today to discuss how a bespoke food waste recycling service could benefit your business.I open the kitchen garbage can, look down, and see a half-rotted Honeycrisp apple. Willshee’s food waste recycling service, can transport commercial food waste to a local anaerobic digestion plant to be broken down into biofuel – a renewable energy source, helping your business to work towards zero waste. But this still doesn’t mean that it has to go to landfill. WRAP studies claim that 26% of all restaurant food waste cannot be avoided. Of course, some food waste will always be inevitable. The infamous chicken house decided to switch to skin-on fries, and even though the change was poorly received by customers, they saved the equivalent of 35 million potatoes across the company by doing so. KFC provides a great example of reducing potato waste. Reducing carbohydrate waste from potatoes, bread, pasta and rice through smaller portion sizes and using more scraps and leftovers would have a significant impact on both food waste and cost. In order of most to least wasted, the most wasted food products in the hospitality and food sector are: Of course, each restaurant will have its own specific food waste issues depending on its cuisines and methods of operation, but it may help to know which foods you should be monitoring more closely: These figures came from savings on stock, additional sales from repurposing leftovers, and lower waste management costs, proving that there are few cons to improving your business’s food waste management. Through this, the average restaurant also cut food waste down by 26% in just one year, and by nearly 90% in two years. WRAP also found that for every £1 a restaurant invested in reducing their food waste, they saved an average of £7 in operating costs over a three-year period, granting a 600% ROI. Our blog post on reducing restaurant food waste can help you start making changes. The impact of each of these factors can be reduced through monitoring and learning about where your business is losing food and therefore money. The main reasons for hospitality food waste are preparation (45%), customer leftovers (34%), and spoilage (21%), according to WRAP. These are numbers that can and absolutely should be reduced. The equivalent of 320 million meals are chucked away each year by British restaurants and cafes, which is enough to feed everyone in the UK five times.ĭouglas McMaster, the owner of Brighton’s zero-waste restaurant Silo, believes that as much as 50% of food in restaurants is wasted, and up to an absurd 80% in fine dining restaurants. Although the largest amounts come from agricultural and household means, restaurants alone contribute 199,100 tonnes of food waste, costing businesses £682 million each year.Īnyone who has worked in a restaurant will have seen large amounts of food thrown out every week, if not every day in some establishments. Food is one of the most preventable waste products sent to landfill.
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