A couple years ago, talk in the food industry began to circulate heavily around the idea of sustainable food and bringing the “farm” back to the “table.” Last year, energy-efficient equipment and efforts to reduce energy, gas and water consumption dominated the conversation. While these remain hot topics, this year waste management is the subject generating the most buzz.

Most people are familiar with the traditional definition of waste management, which basically concentrates on the removal of trash from an operation. In the foodservice industry, the scope of this definition continues to evolve as operators begin to embrace recycling and composting. Probably the newest component in this equation concentrates on reducing the amount of waste operations produce in the first place.

The Foodservice Consultants Society International (FCSI) hosted a one-day conference in Seattle in June that was dedicated solely to this topic. It was a jam-packed information day, with nine speakers covering the three “R's” and one “C” of waste management: reducing, reusing, recycling and composting.

Andrew Shakman, president and CEO of LeanPath, a consulting and technology development company that focuses on helping foodservice operations reduce their pre-consumer waste and overall costs, moderated the panel discussion.

The foodservice industry is one of the most significant producers of food and materials waste on the planet, Shakman said. In fact, Seattle foodservice operations alone produce almost 30 percent of the nearly 500,000 tons of waste the city ships to landfills via nearly 4,500 railcars, according to Carl Woestwin, landscape team leader for Seattle Public Utilities. Woestwin also spoke at the conference.

As the role methane gas, the predominate greenhouse emission found in landfills as a result of decomposing garbage, plays in contributing to ozone depletion becomes better understood, the positive impact waste reduction can have on the environment will become more pronounced throughout the foodservice community.

To start, Shakman outlined the three main types of food waste: pre- and post-consumer food waste, packaging, and operating supplies. In doing so, Shakman defined pre-consumer waste as being all the trimmings, spoiled food and other products from kitchens that end up in the garbage before the finished menu item makes it to the consumer. Post-consumer waste, naturally, is any trash left once the customer has consumed the meal. Shakman defined packaging waste, especially in the form of plastic that can't biodegrade naturally, as anything used to hold food coming into the kitchen and going out. Operating supplies pretty much encompasses every other piece of material used that becomes wasted in a foodservice operation, such as cooking oil and lightbulbs.

The first step in waste management, even before recycling and composting, is reducing the amount of food waste in a foodservice operation. Phyllis Ann Marshall, principal of FoodPower Inc., a restaurant consultant that specializes in menu development and culinary staff training, said that reducing the portion sizes of food served in an operation does have an impact on the amount of waste that's created. Not all consumers choose to “clean their plates,” and unless they take home their food, the food left-over portion typically goes straight into the garbage. Now that more consumers are watching their calories and becoming increasingly health-conscious, reducing portion sizes may encourage consumers to finish their plates, thereby reducing the amount of food wasted.

In addition, Marshall said, cooking to order, rather than bulk food cooking, while this may increase labor demands, will reduce waste tremendously, she added. Oftentimes, food that's cooked in bulk and held for a period of time, such as soups, hot entrées, pastas, and other foods are thrown away if not consumed. More operations are choosing to prepare food hot, and to order, on the line in front of guests. This helps reduce waste.

Reducing the amount of waste that goes through this stream will not only help the environment, but it will also reduce costs for the foodservice operation. Garbage removal is expensive, and with escalating gas and food prices, throwing away food that was costly to begin with continues to simply cost the operation. In fact, Shakman said, food prices have risen nearly 13 percent during the last two years.

Kris Schroeder, RD, CD, administrative director at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, talked about the way her team tracks the amount of waste the hospital's foodservice department created. For example, foodservice staff at Swedish Medical were trained to weigh food trimmings and other pre-consumer waste in the kitchen using special scales provided as part of a waste management system, Schroeder said. The information recorded at each weigh station, located conveniently near garbage cans, is automatically transferred to a spreadsheet that tracks the different types of waste.

After analyzing the results generated from the tracking spreadsheets, Schroeder said, she was able to pinpoint where most of the food waste was coming from, and this turned out to be in the Market Café area, vs. other retail areas, as well as in the prep areas. So, Schroeder trained the culinary staff to be more mindful of their cuts during food prep as one way to prevent excess trimmings going into the garbage. Management also introduced incentives for those staff members who tracked the most waste.

In the end, after working out some kinks, Schroeder said, the operation was able to reduce its solid waste by 19 percent and its liquid waste by 71 percent.

The next step in waste management, according to Woestwin, encompasses donating food to food recovery/donation centers that surround an operation's given area. “It's such an easy thing to do,” Woestwin said, and yet, so many restaurants and foodservice operations don't donate their food.

Recycling and composting are other ways to reuse waste. Some operators use recyclable disposables and have added special bins that allow them to separate refuse and glass, paper and plastic. Still other operators have sent food waste to off-site composting facilities that will transform or sell the matter for use as fertilizer.

Compostable items, food that can't be donated, come from many sources, including spoiled fruits and vegetables, stale bakery items, kitchen prep trimmings and leftover plate scrapings.

Burgerville, a 39-unit Vancouver, Wash.-based chain, has been a foodservice industry pioneer when it comes to green initiatives. For example, Burgerville was among the first in the industry to ship off its frying oil for conversion to biodiesel and using wind power for energy sources. Last year, Burgerville launched a recycling and composting program, which will be in place in each of its restaurants by the end of this year, according to Jack Graves, the chief cultural officer at The Holland Inc., Burgerville's parent company. The goal is to reduce the volume of restaurant-generated waste that goes to local landfills by 85 percent, Graves said. The chain has separate waste bins for recyclables and food, which is picked up by a third-party composting facility.

One challenge mentioned was the fact that many urban areas do not have third-party composting companies that will pick up the waste and convert it for other purposes.

As the demand for this service becomes more pronounced, hopefully more suppliers will emerge.