How can you reduce waste?

Planning

Planning is a vital part of reducing food waste both before and after it has been produced. The five planning concepts are…

• Measurement: identify the quantity and type of food waste going into your bins. Find out exactly where food is being wasted, as well as its value. Keeping costs in mind can have a big impact on how much food is going to waste. Some advanced kitchens have systems which automatically calculate the value of waste going into the bin.
• Staff Engagement: no chef wants to see their carefully crafted dishes binned. In the same way, it’s hardly inspiring for waiting staff to have to transport uneaten food back to the kitchen. Informing and engaging staff can make all the difference in how much food is wasted, whilst also being a valuable tool in getting your eco-friendly food waste reduction message out to customers.
• Reduce Overproduction: once you know where food is being wasted, scale back production accordingly. For example, if buffet-style breakfasts produce a lot of waste, could cooking to order be an option? How about reducing portion sizes on dishes which are often left unfinished? Or perhaps customers could take leftovers home in an eco-friendly takeaway food container?
• Inventory Management: if food is perishing before it has been prepped, are there better storage options available? Perhaps you could negotiate with your food suppliers to change the delivery schedule to reflect when your demands are at their highest? A review of the stock rotation in your fridges could also encourage staff to use the oldest ingredients first.
• Repurposing Excess Ingredients: even the best forecasting is never 100% accurate. Changes in the weather, or a last-minute cancellation can change everything. If you find yourself with excess food, it could be still used in other dishes or sold through apps such as Too Good to Go.

TIP: Vacuum packing food is a great way to keep small quantities of ingredients fresher for longer.

Processing

It's important to understand that food waste is made up of around 77% liquid. Regardless of how you normally store your waste, the liquid component bulks it up, making it bigger and heavier. This means it’s more expensive to transport, process and dispose of. Liquid also speeds decomposition, contributing to odours and methane emissions - potentially leading to problems with vermin or issues with neighbouring homes and businesses.

It’s also worth noting that due to its composition, food waste from catering and hospitality sites isn’t normally directly suitable for making compost - it usually needs more processing before that can take place.

That’s where the IMC WasteStation comes in. The WasteStation is one of the most innovative food waste solutions to come to the market in recent years. Expertly designed and manufactured in the UK, the WasteStation uses a unique process to remove liquid from food waste, reducing its volume by up to 80%. It might not seem so obvious, but such a massive reduction in volume has a huge effect on your waste processing costs. The four main areas you save in are...

• Transport savings: most waste contracts are charged by weight, volume or number of collections. Regardless of how your waste is charged, as WasteStation reduces the food waste volume by such a large amount, your food waste collection costs will significantly reduce too.
• Labour Savings: processing food waste on-site takes a lot of work. Less waste means less time wasted processing it. That's fewer bag changes and fewer trips to the big outdoor bin.
• Storage savings: food waste isn’t fun to store. It’s smelly, messy and attracts vermin. It's also really bulky and takes up a lot of space. As the WasteStation reduces food waste volume by up 80%, you don't need as much room to store it. That means fewer bin bags, less mess and more space for more productive processes.
• Eco savings: food waste is really bad for the environment, both in terms of the resources wasted and the greenhouse gases it produces during decomposition. The WasteStation helps you to quickly repurpose it into an eco-friendly resource in three different ways: anaerobic digestion, in-vessel composting or production of compressed pellets for biofuel. Whichever way you prefer, it’s much better for the environment (and cheaper) than landfill.