Around a third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted, which seriously contributes to climate change - in fact, food waste accounts for 8-10% of humans’ greenhouse gas emissions. Many of us know how to reduce our food waste at home - for example, through batch-cooking, weekly meal planning, or freezing leftovers - but employers and employees don’t necessarily take the same steps at work.
With office catering for team lunches, social events, meetings and conferences back in full swing, it’s likely that offices’ food waste will also increase considerably. Here are a few top tips for ensuring that your office keeps its food waste to a minimum.
Know exactly how many people you need to feed
If you’re planning on ordering a healthy meals delivery for a team lunch event or need meeting food that will impress a potential client, it’s worth checking exactly how many people you’ll be catering for. Whether this means checking your hybrid working rota or asking your client for a number of meeting attendees, taking this relatively simple step can help you cut back your waste by a surprisingly large margin. It’ll also save you spending unnecessary money on food that won’t get eaten.
Encourage staff to take leftovers home with them
If you end up with extra portions for whatever reason, encourage your staff and/or colleagues to save their leftovers for later. Whether have the remaining food later in the working day or they take the food home with them, this is a great way to reduce office waste and helps to encourage your colleagues to think about their own food waste and its environmental impact. You could even designate a ‘leftovers shelf’ in your office fridge so that people know what items they are able to help themselves to!
Buy food with sustainable and/or reusable packaging
Around 500 million plastic boxes are used across the takeaway sector every year and, in most cases, they end up in landfill. A great way to tackle food waste in your office is to organise your office catering with a company that uses sustainable, reusable packaging. This could encourage your colleagues to keep any leftover food for later, rather than disposing of it along with its packaging, and is a more sustainable choice all around.
Have designated food waste bins
Most offices already have at least one recycling bin and a general waste bin, but what about food waste or composting bins? When offices or households fail to dispose of their food waste in a designated bin and instead put it in the general waste, these scraps and leftovers will simply go to landfill and continue to contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
Making the effort to put food waste in a designated food waste bin will likely reduce waste, as well as improve your company’s social responsibility, reduce waste collection costs, and boost employee morale. It might even encourage your staff or colleagues to think about their own waste and recycling habits and make more sustainable choices going forwards. Whether you need meeting food or employee lunches, POW Food can deliver delicious, healthy meals and snacks to your office. We are committed to reducing packaging waste and food waste, as well as boosting employee immunity, energy, and productivity. For more information, visit our website or contact us today.