Compass Group Australia’s Defence Sites Making Real Headway in Reducing Food Waste with Leanpath.
Since April 2022, 19 of our Defence sites have joined the fight against food waste with 23 Messes participating in our Leanpath program. This allows us to track and monitor food waste to make real change. Working towards our goal of zero organics to landfill and halving our total food waste by 2030.
Our teams have been busy measuring all wasted food from vegetable peels to leftover items after meal service. This effort is to understand the amount of food waste produced at site.
Equipped with this information, our teams across Defence have risen to the challenge of food waste prevention. Adjusting their operations in ways that would normally not have been considered.
Across our Defence sites, just in the last quarter alone we have seen some amazing results in reducing food waste and the impact that has had on the environment.
Prevention Impact
Sustainability & Social Impact
With a third of all food produced globally wasted every year, we are clear about the collective role we must play in helping to drive permanent change across our industry.
We recognise that food waste is not only a moral issue, but a key contributor to climate change too.
It wastes the energy to grow, harvest, process and cook food. While food waste in landfill can cause methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas.
Working in partnership with our clients such as Defence, our food waste strategy has three priorities:
PREVENT
Preventing food waste at the source by improving forecasting to make orders more accurate. Using best practice methods for storing food.
Making use of every edible part of the ingredient and understanding our impact by measuring and acting on data insights.
INSPIRE
Inspiring our people and consumers to waste less. Encourage questioning how/what adjustment we can make in our daily operations to reduce food waste, repurposing food into new dishes.
RECOVER AND REPURPOSE
Redistributing food surplus in the community. For example, where possible through pre-existing relationships with OzHarvest or researching and engaging with new enterprises locally to our sites.
The moment we being to measure, we change culture, and we change how people think and work. How we do this with Leanpath is by adapting a three-phase approach:
- We Track Our Waste
- Leanpath Identifies opportunities to reduce food waste via menu engineering, production management, etc.
- Engage our people in the Food Waste Effort
