What is Stop Food Waste Day?
- by bonappetit
What if we told you food decomposing in landfills releases methane, the greenhouse gas that is 20 to 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide? Would you take action to reduce food waste? Did you know that food packaging accounts for almost two-thirds of total packaging waste in American municipal solid waste and is a top pollutant of our waterways and ocean? Does that inspire you to choose reusables?
Compass Group, our parent company, was moved to inspire global action and created Stop Food Waste Day in 2017 to drive awareness around these issues and provide help to reduce food waste both at home and at work, reaching millions of people in over 60 countries. We’re proud to join the truly global campaign that encourages chefs, home cooks, and our guests to think about the impact of their food.
Fighting food waste is nothing new to us, though, as we’ve been working diligently to reduce it since 2007. Waste prevention is inherent in the way we cook and serve our food, preparing meals from scratch in small batches to order, using snout-to-tail and stem-to-root cooking techniques. And we’ve set an aggressive target. We aim to cut food loss and waste by 50% by the year 2030, as a member of the inaugural class of Food Loss and Waste Champions.
As a company, we’re prioritizing waste reduction and diversion by using our patented chef-driven technology to track food waste, regularly donating excess food to community partners, and engaging in waste awareness campaigns on an annual basis. Our commitments are vital to reaching our ambitious waste reduction goals which are guided by the EPA Wasted Food Scale.
This year for Stop Food Waste Day, we are lifting the curtain on how we utilize technology to reduce food waste in our kitchens on a daily basis. All of our teams are tasked with tracking waste utilizing our patented app called Waste Not 2.0, designed to help chefs and culinary teams shift their behavior to prevent future waste.
This revolutionary waste tracking system goes beyond simply measuring the quantity of food waste produced, by getting into the reasons behind why that waste was created in the first place. Waste Not 2.0 was designed with chefs in mind to capture real-time information about the quantity, cause, and destination of waste with ease using data entry tablets in the back-of-house. By analyzing this powerful data, our teams can better understand why food waste is happening to take impactful steps to prevent it in the future.
Join us in celebrating Stop Food Waste Day by learning more about our holistic waste reduction commitments, and bring the zero-waste mentality into your own kitchen with these inventive, scrappy recipes to minimize food waste.