How To Reduce Food Waste In Canteen

Canteen waste is generated by a wide range of businesses, including restaurants and cafés, self-catering kitchens, mobile caterers, and outside caterers who provide buffets.

How do you reduce food waste in canteen?

The duty of care

You must follow your duty of care obligations. Only transfer your waste to a person or business authorised to handle it; otherwise, you may be held liable.

You must include a written description with the waste and keep records of all waste transferred or received for at least two years.

Food businesses that generate more than 5Kg of food waste per week are required to segregate their food waste. There are special provisions for rural businesses.

Waste water

If the waste water generated by your business is classified as liquid waste (trade effluent), you must check with your water company to see if you need a permit.

Cooking oil waste

Do not mix used cooking oil with the rest of your canteen waste. If you generate waste cooking oil, you must properly store it by using oil containers that are strong enough and unlikely to burst or leak during normal use,

storing containers within a secondary containment system (SCS), such as a drip tray, bund, or any other suitable system, which will contain any oil that escapes from its container, and ensuring that only an authorised waste carrier collects and transports your waste for disposal.

Also read: How To Reduce Food Waste In Hotels

Use the stalks and stum

After all, pigs aren’t tenderloins on four legs, and many top chefs are inviting colleagues to “cook tanks,” where they collaborate to develop recipes that will make the animal’s less-popular parts more appealing to the masses.

Thus, the food waste crisis has become a culinary virtue, and the concept is simple to apply to other products: bones, for example, can be used to make a fantastic stock before being thrown away. It’s also simple to find new uses for vegetable scraps.

Read also: Causes Of Food Waste In Restaurants

Modern food waste prevention technology

Aside from employees and customers, you have another powerful ally in your fight against food waste: technology. There are several digital tools available to help you use food more efficiently. Make use of them!

Counter systems, for example, can track how much food is served to your customers in how many portions, which can help you plan future menu rotations.

Intelligent refrigerated storage can assist you in managing your purchasing process by knowing not only what you have on hand, but also how long it has until it expires.

A well-organized recipe database allows you to plan and produce precise quantities of specific dishes, reducing mealtime rushes and making small extra batches easier.

Read also: Examples Of Liquid Waste In The Kitchen

Consult with your team

You can plan, optimise, and check as much as you want, but food waste isn’t something that can be edited on a computer.

Communication and employee training are the be-all and end-all, and they must occur repeatedly.

When things get hectic in the kitchen, it’s easy to forget about new policies, so it’s critical to provide consistent follow-up training to new employees to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

It can be beneficial to provide incentives or to encourage friendly competition.

Conduct a waste audit

To get a sense of what ends up in the canteen, have employees track waste and create graphs with the statistics.

If the canteen is like most American homes, food waste accounts for the majority of total waste.

The staff could track food waste on a weekly basis; once they know what goes to waste the most, they can devise a plan to reduce it.

Conclusion

Every year, 1.3 billion tonnes of food end up in the trash rather than in our stomachs somewhere along the way from farms to processing plants, restaurants, and households. Consider how much money food waste costs!

Food waste is a significant financial issue for any company’s food-service programme. Reorganizing processes, training employees, and updating existing technology all take time and money.

Is it worthwhile? There is no simple answer, but there is reason to be optimistic: you’re saving money on both raw materials and trash collection, so the investment can pay off quickly.