Reducing Food Waste in the Workplace
Food waste is a growing issue, and it doesn’t stop at home or in restaurants. It’s also happening in our break rooms and workplace kitchens. If your organization is evaluating how to improve sustainability practices at the worksite, chances are you’ve thought about how much food goes to waste in your facilities. Reducing food waste not only improves your sustainability metrics, but it also reduces unnecessary costs and creates a more responsible and efficient workplace culture.
Whether you’re overseeing foodservice operations in a corporate office, managing a robust pantry program in your breakroom, or stocking micro-markets across multiple sites, here are some practical steps you can take to reduce food waste in your workplace.
Understanding the Impact of Workplace Food Waste
Globally, nearly 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year. Unfortunately, our workplaces contribute to this grand total.
Food waste in the workplace is often unintentional and, more importantly, avoidable. One major cause of this is overordering, whether that’s catered lunches that are left uneaten or a surplus of snacks in your break spaces or markets. Your office fridge might be host to meals and items left behind or forgotten. These things might seem harmless at first, but when you add them all up,
chances are it’s impacting the environment and your company’s bottom line.
By minimizing unnecessary food purchases and fostering a more conscious workplace culture, you can positively impact the earth and your organization’s finances.
Follow along with this guide to better understand how you can reduce waste and recover the food in your place of work.
Raise Awareness to Build a Culture of Accountability
The first step in reducing food waste is simply making it visible. After all, the first step in solving a problem is addressing it.
Most employees are probably completely unaware of how much food they’re wasting. Start with communicating with your associates and raising awareness about how much food your workplace wastes and how to get those numbers down as a collective.
Take a look at what channels you typically use to communicate with your employees. Push awareness campaigns through employee newsletters and internal communication platforms. If you work in-office, consider implementing print or digital signage to get your message across.
Are employees still not engaging? Consider turning it into a site-wide challenge with incentives to create as little waste as possible.
Another great way to boost awareness around the issue of food waste is to create a team of food waste champions. These associates will be responsible for informing other employees about the importance of minimizing food waste and offer helpful advice as to how they can avoid wasting food in the workplace.
Implement a Smart Communal Food System
While buying food in bulk may seem counterintuitive, food waste often occurs because there is no clear system for how communal or leftover food is shared. Setting up a structured and clearly communicated approach can significantly reduce waste and increase employee engagement.
A pantry program in the workplace can establish these perimeters and reduce the amount of waste your employees create. Bulk snack dispensers can also reduce the amount of packaging and plastic in your work’s trash.
Often, food waste occurs because there is no clear system for how communal or leftover food is shared — especially after catered meetings or pantry restocks. Setting up a structured and clearly communicated approach can significantly reduce waste and increase employee engagement.
Create designated “Share Zones” where anyone can take an item from the breakroom refrigerator or a bin on the countertop.
Standard leftover protocols can also reduce food waste. Create a standard operating procedure for meeting leftovers. This might look like wrapping the food, labeling it with a date, and posting a quick announcement on an internal communication platform.
Through Canteen’s managed services, businesses can set up these systems seamlessly. Our team provides end-to-end support — from stocking your micro-markets with appropriately portioned items to facilitating shared food programs.
Right-Size Food and Supply Orders
Overstocking is one of the leading causes of food waste in workplace environments. Snacks expire, fresh items spoil, and beverages often go unused. This doesn’t just impact your waste metrics , but it also affects your budget.
To avoid this, administrators should implement a data-driven approach to inventory and supply planning. By tracking consumption trends, you can better monitor what people are actually consuming versus what’s being stocked and occupying space on the shelves.
Using “first in, first out” systems to properly rotate food ensures older inventory is used before supplying newer products.
Canteen makes this easy through its advanced inventory management tools and analytics platform. Their team monitors item-level data to ensure supplies are optimized for your specific location. This means less overstock, fewer expired goods, and a leaner, more efficient operation.
Incorporate Food Waste Tracking and Reporting
To make sustainable changes, it’s important to properly measure and track the food that’s coming to and going from your workplace.
Consider setting up basic food waste tracking for catered events, micro-market spoilage, or pantry rotations. Identify the items that employees most frequently waste and either avoid ordering them or reduce the quantity you order. If you find yourself over-ordering, reduce the number of deliveries arriving in a given period of time.
Work directly with Canteen to monitor the amount of waste your workplace creates. Our innovative technology can closely monitor at-risk items. We can dynamically adjust offerings to help you track progress against environmental benchmarks.
Engage Employees With Incentives and Education
While having a team of champions on your side is important, you’ll need all hands on deck to be successful. Involving employees in the solution is crucial. Once systems are in place, create opportunities for team members to actively participate in food recovery.
You might consider creating reward programs for employees who bring reusable containers to work to package leftovers and take them home. Have more snacks than you know what to do with in your breakroom? Consider hosting “food rescue” events where workers can distribute surplus snacks. Start a “Zero Waste Day” where you challenge employees not to waste any food for a whole day.
If your organization offers sustainability training, consider incorporating education about food waste to keep your employees informed and up to date on best practices.
Explore Donation and Composting Partnerships
Composting is one of the best ways to handle surplus food, but composting at the workplace can be a challenge. Without the right facilities, decomposing food can create a stench no one wants to deal with. Thankfully, on-site composting isn’t the only solution.
Take a look at what’s available to you locally. Depending on the laws in your area, you may be able to partner with food donation programs. Some local organizations can accept safe-to-share surplus food. This allows you to reduce your workplace’s food waste and give back to your community at the same time. It’s a win-win!
Third-party composting is also an option. Rather than trying to compost food at your workplace, involve another organization that can take your food scraps off-site. This prevents food waste from ending up in a landfill and creating harmful emissions.
Reducing food waste in the workplace doesn’t require a massive shift overnight. It begins with awareness, improves through better planning, and is sustained by smart systems, and partners that can support you along the way.
Whether you’re managing a single breakroom or multiple national office sites, Canteen’s scalable foodservice solutions are designed to help businesses:
- Reduce spoilage and surplus with accurate inventory tracking
- Promote sustainability with reusable packaging and redistribution systems
- Monitor and improve waste reduction with real-time data
With the right tools and a thoughtful approach, you can transform food waste from an overlooked issue into a meaningful opportunity for leadership, efficiency, and sustainability. Get started with Canteen today to explore the options available to you.