Waste Disposal in Food Industry

Do you know how much money you throw away in your trash every day? You do not know ? Or, you know but you do not know how to prevent money lost through your food waste? You are in the right place to find the answers to these questions, change your foodservice practices and reduce restaurants waste to a minimum in the best possible way.
Every day restaurants around the world throw away tons of food while many people on the same planet are dying from hunger. Our reality is full of contradictory facts that we can ignore or not. For someone this will be good reason to get concerns and take care of their food waste, and the other will need more reason for that. Maybe good reason will be data issued by the study of University of Arizona that says that the percentage of food waste in fast-food restaurants is about 9.55 % and in restaurants with full service 11.3 % of the total amount of purchased food. Cost of food for the preparation of meals is the second largest expense in the restaurants industry, right after personnel costs. These data confirm that you can reduce these costs by almost 10 %. You got enough reasons to organize the restaurant waste management? Your goals are to reduce, reuse and recycle! Where to start?

Restaurant Waste Management

Reducing waste make good business sense! To organize a successful waste management for your establishment that will minimize it to a minimum and utilize existing waste in the best possible way you need to do the following actions:

1. Track and analyze the waste in a restaurant
2. Review the documentation on the purchased goods and review the business decisions
3. Conduct inventory frequently in order to compare purchase and quantity of garbage
4. Change menu in order to minimize quantity of leftovers
5. Create a rules for this program
6. Recycle everything what can be recycled!

For this job you and your employees will be rewarded. Some of the great results are:

• Reducing food costs and generate revenue
• Making impact on the creation of a positive image
• Improving foodservice practices
• Improvin your equipment
• Positive impact on employee morale
• Positive impact on the environment

Create a Team Responsible for Managing the Garbage

You can hire a professional team to do a waste audit or you can do it with your team.
Who should be in the team? Depending on the restaurant capacity and scope of the operations performed in the restaurant team may consist of one or more persons. It would be best if these persons are involved in the preparation of meals, because they are familiar with the amount of specific ingredients that are used when preparing certain dishes. On the other hand, the staff in charge for cleaning and washing dishes are familiar with the type and quantity of garbagethat left after customers finish with eating.

When selecting staff for this job choose persons with analytical spirit rather than those who are good with numbers.They will have better insight into the actual state of your garbage. If you include more employees in this job, choose leader who will will coordinate with other employees and be sure that they follow the program and all information has been recorded in a timely manner.
But above all, it is necessary to educate every member of the team about methods of monitoring, storage and recycling.

Restaurant Waste Audit – Monitoring and Analysis of Your Garbage

Restaurant waste can be roughly divided into two major groups – the one that left before consuming food and the one that left after your guests finish with dining.
Restaurant waste that left before your guest consumed food would be one that occurs during food preparation like raw foods such as potato peel, roots from leafy vegetables or bones, improperly prepared food, fluids and food accidentally spilled on the kitchen floor etc. Statistical data suggest that as many as 4-10% of raw food in the restaurants ends up being this kind of garbage. Losses are really great but there are solutions for the recycling of such waste by donating to food banks or some other national association. Food can be also reused – old bread can be tasty toast!

Garbage that left after dining represents everything that guests has not eaten along with the packaging in case that in your restaurant you are using disposable packaging, such as plastic plates and paper cups. Promotion of extra- large servings of food in the United States as a marketing trick to attract new guests had a big impact why this kind of food waste in restaurant become real problem.
Waste assessment will give you information how much garbage your restaurant create and what is the quantity of waste that can be reduced through the practice of waste management, recycling and reuse.

Identifying Quantity of Different Types of Waste

You will Identify your garbage easily through the following actions :

• Conversation with the employees
• Disposal of garbage in specific containers
• Recording of types and quantities of waste
• A review of invoices and other documentation