These are the Changes You Can Make Right Now to Help Reduce Food Waste (and Protect Your Bottom Line)
These changes won’t disrupt your business. In fact, they may help things run much smoother than usual.
Three billion.
The food wasted annually – the ~1.3 billion tons of food that ends up in the landfill – contains enough calories to feed approximately three billion people for a year!
Yet, in 2024, it’s reported that…
- ~733 million people are facing hunger around the world, with ~37 million people facing emergency levels of hunger and more than 1 million people facing catastrophic hunger.
- ~ 24.5 million children are acutely malnourished in 15 countries.
- ~ 2.33 billion people are food insecure, meaning they don't have regular access to nutritious food.
So, why is even a single person experiencing food insecurity or hunger right now? There is clearly enough food being produced to feed everyone on the planet today and then some.
Rooting Out the Real Problem(s)
While there are many reasons why food is ending up in the landfill long before people ever have a chance to put it on their plate, there seems to be consensus around these seven:
- There is overproduction or over-prep of food and not enough people to buy it or eat it prior to expiration. It’s very common that more food is prepared than a localized customer base can consume in a timely fashion. Careful use of prescriptive analytics can drive more optimized production and planning.
- Supply isn’t being properly distributed in alignment with demand. There might be a food desert 10 miles away from four grocery stores where overstocked/undersold fresh food, or even packaged food, is consistently thrown in the dumpster. While organizations like Too Good to Go are trying to step in to rescue food, proper demand planning and distribution could reduce the amount of food that needs to be rescued.
- Stock rotation isn’t being effectively managed in warehouses, distribution centers, or stores. Too many people wait until the expiry date – or well past it – to pull inventory. At that point, it’s hard to redistribute it to discount sellers, food banks, etc. So, it goes in the trash.
- Environmental conditions aren’t being monitored and managed, which leads to spoilage and automatic dumpster disposal. Sometimes a temperature fluctuation, humidity change or other environmental influence on food is evident, visible. Yet, at times, food losses are the result of doubt rather than data.
- Items are lost or mishandled. It’s easy to lose sight of items. We’re human. Distractions arise. Things get tucked away. Something can get moved without its new location being properly documented.
- Food sellers are responding to consumer expectations that stem from misunderstandings. It’s no secret that retailers must often reject produce and packaged goods that don’t meet aesthetic standards, even if they are edible. Likewise, food is sometimes discarded to make space for new stock, particularly when dealing with perishable items. And “buy this, get that” promotions can lead to consumers buying more than they need and subsequently wasting it.
- There’s a quality issue identified. This includes listeria, salmonella, and other contaminants that cause foodborne illnesses.
In the last situation, when people’s lives are on the line, there’s no choice but to dispose of compromised food items. And there can be other contributing factors to food waste, such as consumer behavior, poor harvesting techniques and a lack of proper storage or transportation infrastructure, to name a few.
However, I believe the first six problems can be addressed. Food waste can be stopped in its tracks at a global level (and the growing hunger problem can be too).
Technology has matured, and the affordability of that tech has improved, to the point where it is now much easier for people in the food supply chain – your employees, suppliers, and partners – to thoroughly inspect, store, distribute, manage, prep, and price food.
The same technology used in global supply chains every day to help workers properly inspect, package, store, transport, track, trace, and authenticate pharmaceutical, beauty, and electronic goods can be used to reduce food waste and loss. Ditto for the technology used to plan, monitor, and manage cold chain goods storage and distribution or help retailers manage distribution center or shelf inventory.
There are barcode, RFID, and vision systems along with mobile devices and environmental sensors. There’s also demand planning and inventory management software that can help you make better production, distribution, and stocking decisions along with mobile printers or digital shelf-edge labels that can help frontline workers update pricing and promotions as needed to move inventory. The list could go on and on. But any combination of the technology we already use in grocery stores, warehouses, or production, sorting, and packing facilities could stop a lot of the food waste and loss occurring in your operation today.
It’s now possible to know…
- when a machine vision camera says the health of a chicken is good. (It’s why one of the biggest fast-food chains in the world is inspecting the feet of chicken before harvesting.)
- when a temperature sensor or humidity sensor confirms a frozen item stayed within the acceptable range during shipping.
- that an item is properly labeled when there is a machine vision and fixed scanner inspecting it at every production and distribution point.
- that orders are right sized and properly routed when we have demand planning software informing decisions.
- inventory is properly rotated for first in, first out (FIFO) or first expired, first out (FEFO) picks when items have RFID tags that help confirm what’s on the shelf right now and the inbound and expiry dates on each labeled item.
- items are priced right when the latest pricing and promotions (to help move older inventory) are being automatically updated on shelf-edge labels.
- food or beverage stock is properly accounted for during inbound and outbound operations if it’s properly labeled and automatically scanned by a worker with a wearable or mobile computer (or even a fixed barcode scanner/RFID reader) and the data is sent to a blockchain or similar digital ledger.
And it’s this type of knowledge that leads to several positive business outcomes above and beyond the reduction of food loss and waste. This is how you improve productivity, efficiency, throughput, and margins. It’s how you achieve high customer satisfaction ratings and compliance with government regulations such as the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act or EU Digital Passport.
So, take a few minutes right now to do two things:
Look at this UN guide on the “actions to take” to reduce food waste and loss.
Start a conversation (or, better yet, schedule a consult) with someone who can help you figure out the right way to digitize and automate your operations per the UN recommendations.
In the U.S., there’s a consensus that the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) can be a positive driver of change and that food traceability in general is the right area to invest. However, earlier this month, Jim Jones, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods noted: “While we have heard broad support for the rule [FSMA] and its benefits, we have also heard a number of concerns from industry about how we get there.”
If you bring specialists in to assess your current situation and get to the root cause(s)of waste in your operation, then it will be a lot easier to know how to get where you need to go. You will also have someone guiding you so that you’re not trying to piece together a solution.
Just know that, even with help, it’s going to feel like a lot of work to get the right tools in place to stop the root causes of food loss and waste. This is one problem you’re solving. There are likely several issues that share the same outcome: food loss and waste. So, approach this like you would any other big operational change. Ask about all the technology tools available to solve the problem and how they would need to work together to help your team gain better control over inventory. Consider the fundamental process changes, and even the mindset shift, that may be required to eliminate food loss and waste. Just don’t forget to think about the potential implications of your action plan.
For example, if you need to label or tag your food items to make sure they’re fully traceable throughout the supply chain and fully accounted for by retail store or restaurant staff once on the shelf, you’ll want to consider the recyclability of the materials being used. Or if you are hoping to use technologies with a low greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint or with lower power consumption requirements, communicate those criteria up front.
Something Else to Chew On…
Food losses aren’t just problematic for the people who are struggling to consistently put food on the table…the people living in food deserts or suffering from the rising cost of food that’s occurring at least in part due to perceived food shortages. Food losses put a financial strain on healthcare systems because more patients are needing care. They’re putting a strain on the governments trying to source food for those who can’t afford it with the rising prices. They’re putting a strain on your business because you’re having to address the issues of unhappy customers or raise prices to offset losses…losses that are mostly preventable with the right use of technology that’s been around for a while.
Of course, technology-supported changes aren’t a panacea. Even if everyone in the food supply chain – farmers, ranchers, producers, packers, shippers, stores, food service providers, etc. – did all the right things to protect and properly distribute the food supply, there is still tremendous waste occurring in our homes. (The Food and Agriculture Organization says that consumer-level food waste can be as high as 40-50% of the total food waste in high-income regions.)
And yet… there is a need here. Your customers, partners, suppliers, investors…they all expect someone to tackle these issues. Governments are starting to make it an obligation. Let’s work together to figure out what small changes can be made today to reduce food waste, for the benefit of ourselves, the planet, and people all around the world.
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