The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has estimated that 30-45% of America’s food supply goes to waste. That is a problem and challenge taken very seriously by the food industry.
“What that number means to global hunger and greenhouse gas emissions, is massive,” says Hans Sauter, Chief Sustainability Officer and Senior Vice President of Corporate R&D and Agriculture for Fresh Del Monte Produce, Inc., a global producer, marketer and distributor of high quality fresh-cut fruit and vegetables.
Categories of Food Waste
There are five categories of food waste in the produce sector:
- Rotten food that is inedible due to decay or other injuries;
- Ugly food that is rejected because of cosmetic deficiencies
- Old food that has been in the value chain too long;
- Excess food that a consumer can’t eat; and
- Trimmed food, or the rinds, seeds, and other parts of food that humans don’t eat. While some food waste is virtually inevitable, loss reduction strategies are needed not only to enhance food availability and farmland use-efficiency, but also to mitigate the environmental ramifications which include greenhouse gas emissions if the waste ends up in a landfill, or to a lesser degree in a large-scale composting facility.
The Industry-Wide Response
In response to this challenge, food retailers and suppliers in California, Oregon and Washington have created a multi-stakeholder, public/private partnership called the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment (PCFWC). Several projects have been implemented as part of this commitment and these have generated learnings that have then been shared between the participating entities. This article is based on interviews with Hans Sauter of Fresh Del Monte (quoted earlier) and Pete Pearson, Vice President Food Loss & Waste at World Wildlife Fund, a non-profit participant in PCFWC.
One of the particularly promising approaches that has emerged from PCFWC experience has been engagement with the hands-on workers in the food handling process and empowering them to brainstorm waste reduction strategies.
An Employee Empowerment Concept
Based on an encouraging example of this approach at Bob’s Red Mill that was shared within the PCFWC signatory group, a major food waste reduction pilot project was initiated at Fresh Del Monte’s North Portland Oregon facility. This is a site which handles imports of pineapple, watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe and mango. Some of this fruit is distributed as whole, fresh product and part of it is converted to fresh-cut options, meaning it’s cut and packaged at the facility.
The first step of the program engaged Fresh Del Monte’s staff at the Portland facility, educating team members who directly handle the fruit [HS1] about the magnitude and consequences of food waste. They were also asked to brainstorm how to prevent food waste within the Fresh Del Monte processing facility.
“[The project] was extremely successful in engaging the workers. The approach was very practical, and since everyone has to look into their own wallet, workers were able to relate how these learning could also apply to their own household. Understanding the connection of food waste with climate change now becomes food for thought. Not just impacting our business and facilities but also communities because they are sharing with their community,” says Sauter.
The degree to which its employees were motivated to do something about waste was evident as approximately 75% of the workers in that facility submitted a total of 197 distinct food waste reduction ideas. They also reported feeling empowered by being asked to play this role.
“What Fresh Del Monte is doing with employee engagement is really exciting and can really make an impact,” says Pearson.
Picking a Winning Idea
The “winning” idea involved changing the order of a sorting and sanitation step preserving more fully edible fruit that could be used in a fresh-cut option. This idea was tested on five commodity fruits — cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, pineapple, watermelon — to great success: among fruit that would have gone to waste, 53.2% was recovered.
Although the idea was surprisingly simple, it can have a great impact, Sauter says. Fresh Del Monte is now working out how to implement this new process at its other fresh cut facilities in the U.S.
Overall, the solutions that are coming out of these and similar efforts include ways to prevent damage/loss, to reduce waste through procedural changes, by donating products, or by recycling/upcycling. Food waste is a complex problem and solutions require multi-player, pre-competitive coordination and the empowering of the people that are closest to the processes.
