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No one wants to waste food, yet food is the single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills in the United States.
With food waste contributing to financial losses, environmental consequences, and operational inefficiencies, more businesses are recognizing the value of effective waste management.
While there are various approaches that businesses can adopt, there is one strategy that can benefit companies across all sectors: a food waste log.
This simple yet powerful tool helps businesses systematically identify, track, and reduce waste. However, companies must know how to properly use one to reap the benefits of this tool.
To help your company adopt this approach more effectively, this guide walks you through how to implement food waste logs and shares tips for reducing waste.
Key Takeaways
- Food waste logs are valuable tools for companies that handle food products—such as food manufacturers, restaurants, and retailers—and can lead to long-term cost savings, improved operational habits, and enhanced sustainability.
- While the contents of a food waste log may vary slightly, they typically include the time and date, type of food waste, quantity of waste, and reason for waste.
- Reviewing the food service waste log weekly or monthly helps companies uncover trends and make data-driven decisions to address issues like spoilage, overproduction, prep waste, and food waste during transportation—ultimately reducing waste at the source.
- While logging waste is only the first step toward improved sustainability, the insights gained from your food waste log can help your company implement a range of reduction strategies—from adjusting portion sizes to providing regular staff training.
What Is a Food Waste Log and Why Does It Matter?
A food waste log is a record-keeping tool used by foodservice businesses to track discarded food, understand the causes, and ultimately reduce waste. Food waste logs are valuable tools for companies that handle food products—such as food manufacturers, restaurants, and retailers—and can lead to long-term cost savings, improved operational habits, and enhanced sustainability.
For instance, let’s say a restaurant is facing economic losses due to food waste. By using a restaurant food waste log, they can accurately identify underlying issues they were previously unaware of—allowing them to address these problems and prevent future waste.
Food Waste Log Examples: What’s Typically Included?
While the contents of a food waste log may vary slightly, they typically include the following information:
- Time and date
- Type of food waste
- Quantity of waste
- Reason for waste
Companies can also include a section in their log for additional information or context. For example, let’s say a company experiences higher quantities of food waste on a specific date. If a circumstance like an event or supply chain error contributed to the waste, it should be documented to improve understanding.
Take a look at the EPA’s food waste log to better understand how it works: EPA Food Waste Log
Why Are Food Waste Logs Important?
Food waste logs offer companies a range of benefits, including:
- Reduces food costs: Food waste tracking helps companies identify what type of food is wasted and why. This helps them create effective waste management strategies, thereby reducing the costs associated with food waste.
- Improves inventory management: Food service waste logs help companies identify recurring waste patterns, providing valuable insight into how to better align inventory with actual demand.
- Helps optimize prep and portion sizes: By identifying food waste trends, companies can adjust portion sizes and menu offerings to reduce waste at the source.
- Supports staff accountability: When employees actively track waste, they become more aware of how it’s generated, leading to more mindful food handling and portion control.
- Encourages sustainability goals: By supporting waste reduction, food waste logs also help companies achieve short- and long-term sustainability goals while reducing their environmental footprint.
- Creates a culture of awareness: The first step toward reducing waste is building awareness. By implementing food waste logs and educating staff on the importance of waste reduction, companies can make a significant difference in the amount of waste generated.
- Provides data to drive smarter decisions: Food waste logs generate actionable insights that help businesses make smarter decisions about menu planning, supplier selection, and kitchen layout optimization.
Common Types of Food Waste Businesses Face
An important part of learning how to reduce food waste is understanding the different types of waste an establishment can generate.
The common types of food waste generated in commercial kitchens, restaurants, and foodservice businesses include:
- Prep Waste: This includes trimmings, peels, stems, seeds, and other scraps generated during food preparation. While some of this waste is unavoidable, over-prepping and poor cutting techniques further contribute to this issue, leading to unnecessary waste.
- Spoilage: This includes food that goes bad before it’s used, often due to poor storage—such as incorrect temperature or humidity levels—improper handling, or overproduction.
- Overproduction Waste: Overconsumption and overproduction are huge contributors to food waste, often driven by strict sorting and grading standards, marketing strategies, and poor demand forecasting.
- Plate Waste: Plate waste refers to food left on customer plates, typically caused by large portion sizes or unpopular menu items.
- Expired Inventory: Expired inventory is another common cause of food waste in restaurants and other food establishments, often due to poor inventory rotation, overordering, or limited shelf life.
How to Set Up and Use a Food Waste Log Effectively
There are 5 key steps to effectively implementing a food waste log:
1. Choose Your Format: Digital vs. Paper Log
Food waste logs can be either paper or digital. The advantage of paper logs is that they’re easy to set up and act as practical tools for small teams with limited tech access. Digital food waste logs, on the other hand, are more efficient and make it easier to analyze food waste patterns and data. Companies must choose between these two options, basing their decision on their unique requirements and resources.
2. Determine What to Track
As mentioned, food waste logs usually track details such as the time and date, the type and amount of food wasted, and the reason for the waste. It’s important to document each detail carefully, as it enables companies to develop comprehensive food waste management solutions based on their findings.
3. Assign Responsibility
To ensure consistency, companies should assign dedicated team members to log waste. While companies may implement various logging processes, training staff to record waste in real time during their shifts is recommended. Logging waste at the end of the day can lead to inconsistencies due to missing or inaccurate details.
4. Train Staff and Build a Routine
Comprehensive training is required to ensure food waste is properly logged. In addition to explaining proper logging techniques, your company should also emphasize the importance of waste reduction and how collaboration can help achieve sustainability goals.
5. Review and Analyze Regularly
Reviewing the food service waste log weekly or monthly helps companies uncover trends and make data-driven decisions. This helps address issues like spoilage, overproduction, prep waste, and food waste during transportation, thereby helping companies reduce waste at the source.
6 Tips to Reduce Waste Once Trends Are Logged
It’s important to note that logging waste is only the first step toward improved sustainability. With the information gathered from your food waste log, your company can implement a variety of waste reduction strategies—ranging from adjusting portion sizes to providing regular staff training.
1. Adjust Portion Sizes
Restaurant food waste logs help companies identify when portions are too large or when certain food items are unfavored by clients. By adjusting your menu and portion sizes based on this information, your company can reduce waste and better cater to your clients’ preferences.
2. Optimize Ordering Based on Usage Trends
Identifying patterns in spoilage or expired inventory waste allows businesses to refine their ordering habits. By enhancing inventory management in foodservice, companies can improve order accuracy, extend a product’s shelf life through better storage methods, and improve demand forecasting.
3. Redesign Prep Workflows
If your food waste log demonstrates that large quantities of waste are generated during food preparation, then you should redesign your workflow to create more sustainable processes. Since waste logs reveal the reasons behind waste—such as rushed processes or poor handling—you can determine what changes need to be implemented.
4. Improve Storage and Inventory Rotation
Companies experiencing high rates of spoilage and expired items should evaluate their storage practices. To reduce waste, products should be stored at the right temperature and humidity level, rotated regularly, and clearly labeled with use-by dates.
5. Repurpose Ingredients Creatively
Are you constantly discarding surplus ingredients? Rather than throwing them out, you can use them to create new products for your customers. For instance, let’s say you have surplus apples; instead of adding these apples to your food waste log, you can create pies, muffins, apple juice, or even fermented products.
6. Train and Engage Staff Regularly
If your food waste log demonstrates that certain shifts or teams generate more waste than others, then they may require additional training. Remember that reducing waste is a team effort, meaning you should foster a culture of open communication, continuous improvement, and shared responsibility to ensure long-term waste reduction.
Common Challenges Businesses Face in Reducing Food Waste
While food waste logs offer several benefits, businesses may still face challenges when reducing waste, including:
1. Lack of Infrastructure
Many companies don’t have the infrastructure required to separate, store, and compost large quantities of food waste. Companies like Shapiro help you address this challenge by providing food waste recycling solutions that simplify waste management, enabling you to divert food from landfills without the burden of handling on-site recycling.
2. Time and Labor Constraints
In fast-paced work environments—such as those in restaurants and food distribution companies—waste-related tasks can feel overwhelming. For that reason, it’s important that you implement practical solutions that your staff can adopt without interrupting their everyday operations.
3. Complex Waste Streams
Different food waste types require different handling protocols. Since many companies lack the time, equipment, or expertise to manage different materials safely and sustainably, working with an experienced waste management company helps ensure compliance with local regulations.
With our food waste management guide, you can start learning more about waste management. However, we recommend reaching out to our team directly for more detailed information.
4. Regulatory Pressures
As regulations around food waste disposal become stricter, understanding and complying with these evolving rules can feel overwhelming for businesses. By working with a food waste management company, businesses can focus on their day-to-day operations while their partner handles waste diversion efficiently and in compliance with local regulations.
5. No Clear End Solution
Conducting a food waste audit and logging food waste are the first steps toward greater sustainability. However, many businesses are unsure what to do with this information, lacking a clear plan to ensure waste is disposed of sustainably. Without a trusted recycling partner, food waste may still end up in landfills—ultimately increasing a company’s food waste carbon footprint.
Conclusion
Food waste logs are powerful tools for tracking both the quantity of waste and the reasons behind it—empowering businesses to make informed decisions, uncover inefficiencies, and take actionable steps toward long-term waste reduction.
In addition to using a food waste log, we encourage you to evaluate your broader waste management goals, identifying different ways to prevent food waste and how to increase landfill diversion.
At Shapiro, we provide waste management solutions that are tailored to the unique needs of each business. We’ll work closely with you to create a strategy that addresses your unique challenges and helps you achieve sustainability goals.
Contact us today to learn more about our services.
Baily Ramsey, an accomplished marketing specialist, brings a unique blend of anthropological insight and marketing finesse to the digital landscape. Specializing in educational content creation, she creates content for various industries, with a particular interest in environmental initiatives.
