Top Actions: Turn food waste into business value
Explore the top actions your business can take to tackle food waste. Click each tile for practical actions, guidance, and downloadable resources to support your food waste reduction journey.
If you measure it, you can manage it.
Unmeasured and unmanaged food waste is a business risk and a missed opportunity.
Targets drive focus. Plans drive change.
Empower your team to reduce waste at work and home
Address operational food waste sources and embed waste prevention in SOPs.
Design and innovate for food waste free products and reuse of by-products.
Maximise commercial value from surplus food via secondary markets and upcycling.
Apply the Food Recovery Hierarchy to unavoidable FLW to capture value and avoid landfill.
Partner with suppliers and customers to address waste hotspots.
Use procurement to influence waste reduction across the supply chain.
Educate and shape consumer behaviours to reduce food waste.
Drive industry and policy change through leadership and advocacy.
1. Measure What Matters
Understand where the waste is within your business and why it occurs through robust measurement and investigation.
What to do:
- Conduct regular food waste audits (e.g. biannual) following global protocols (UN’s Food Loss and Waste Reporting Protocol).
- Small businesses or individual sites may want to use our Food Waste Rapid Review Toolkit to get started on understanding your food waste.
- The Kai Commitment team are experienced in helping medium to large businesses do this using a customise spreadsheet that meets global requirements. Joining the Kai Commitment will also provide you with food waste measurement reports that help you identify your food waste hotspots and opportunities.
- Track waste volumes, composition, causes, and destinations to identify food waste hotspots that may be costing your business in dollars and emissions.
- Calculate the financial impacts of food waste, are you wasting too many inputs or paying too much in waste disposal.
- Wasted food puts strain on land and water resources and is wasted emissions. Speak to the Kai Commitment team about how to calculate these impacts.
- Report regularly to senior leaders to maintain visibility on food waste risks and opportunities.
Download: Food Waste Rapid Review Toolkit
2. Assess Your Food Waste Risks & Opportunities
Assess the impact of food waste hotspots on value creation or loss through a financial, environmental, social and governance lens (ESG).
What to do:
- Review your food waste for financial risk, reputational risk, market, investor or staff dissatisfaction or other risks.
- Assess the significance (i.e. materiality) of food waste hotspots across environmental, social, and governance risks. Hotspots can include waste of:
- Expensive ingredients
- High volumes of material
- High emissions foods
- Edible food that could be sold if managed better
- Repurpose-able food, that could have an upcycling market
- Prioritise material food waste issues into your sustainability strategy, separate from other inorganic waste.
- Include food waste in ESG reporting and climate disclosures and consider how food waste reduction can serve your social, climate or profitability goals.
3. Set a Food Waste Action Plan with Targets and KPIs
Set ambition through clear targets, KPIs, cross-functional delivery teams, and resources.
What to do:
- Set measurable internal food waste reduction targets and KPIs.
- Align organisational commitments with the global aspirational target UNSDG 12.3 to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030 or other ambitious organisational target
- Inspire others and show leadership through publicly committing to food waste reduction.
- Build a cross-functional action plan with divisional accountability.
