How to reduce food and other organic waste in your business

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, an estimated 20% (or 11 million tonnes) of all the food produced in the country each year ends up in landfills. There, it mixes with other organic material, such as yard waste and soiled paper. As this mixture degrades, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide and more efficient at trapping heat.

Second Harvest, which collaborates with food businesses across the supply chain to redirect surplus food to nonprofit organizations nationwide, examined this waste in terms of its impact on our ability to curb pollution. It found that food waste alone generates more than 56 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions in Canada every year.

How your business can reduce food waste

If you’re in the food business, wasted food not only represents a direct loss of value but can also increase your waste management expenses. That’s because many waste management providers charge by weight.

“There are two sides to this problem,” says Stuart Lilley, founder of ReFeed Canada, a Vancouver company on a mission to reduce food waste. “On one hand, you have all this food that doesn’t quite meet grading requirements and so is thrown away. On the other hand, you have people going hungry. Food banks and other non-profits are happy to take this food, but they don’t have the capacity to manage it.”

That’s where ReFeed and other organizations like it across Canada come in. These organizations recover produce that has been rejected for reasons ranging from size or visual abnormalities that don’t meet grading requirements to purchase agreements that have fallen through.

Reducing the amount of food and organic waste you need hauled away will help your bottom line while lowering your GHG emissions at the same time.

Here is a two-step guide to lower food waste:

Step 1: Evaluate purchasing and handling

1. Conduct waste assessments

Restaurants, food producers, processors and distributors need to study their processes and set targets for reducing food waste. A waste assessment helps businesses understand where, when and why waste is occurring—from overproduction and improper storage to spoilage, trimming losses or customer plate waste. Tracking what’s being discarded over a set period provides valuable insights into patterns and problem areas.
Once the data is collected, businesses can categorize the types of waste, measure their quantities and estimate their financial and environmental impacts. This information forms the foundation for realistic waste reduction goals and targeted strategies.

2. Identify high-waste points

Look for points in the production line with abnormally high rates of waste or rejection and investigate why. 
“Sometimes it’s as simple as installing higher guardrails on your conveyor belts so things aren’t falling off onto the floor. Little things like that can really add up,” says Lilley, who has been working for a decade in food re-generation, covering the areas of waste management, circular systems, food rescue, nutrient upcycling and bioconversion processes of agrifood byproducts

3. Improve procurement forecasting

Good forecasting, healthy supplier relationships and rigorous purchasing and planning practices will ensure you’re buying the correct amount of food to meet customer demand. Accurate forecasting begins with analyzing sales data, seasonal trends, and customer preferences to predict how much product you’ll need at different times of the year. Utilizing digital inventory or point-of-sale systems can enhance this process by providing real-time insights into purchasing and consumption patterns.

Collaborating closely with suppliers also plays a key role—open communication allows you to adjust orders quickly in response to changing demand or unexpected events, reducing the risk of overstocking or spoilage. It’s equally important to build flexibility into your procurement practices, such as ordering smaller quantities more frequently or sourcing locally to shorten lead times. By continuously refining your forecasting models and reviewing them regularly, you can align supply with actual demand, cut food waste and save money.

4. Enhance inventory management

This is especially important for avoiding losses when dealing with resources that have a short storage life. Effective inventory management starts with knowing exactly what you have on hand, how long it will last, and how quickly it moves. Implementing a “first in, first out” (FIFO) system ensures that older stock is used before newer deliveries, helping to minimize spoilage. Regular inventory checks and clear labeling of expiration dates can also prevent food from being forgotten or wasted.

Technology can greatly support this process—digital inventory systems can track quantities, send alerts for approaching expiry dates, and generate reports to identify slow-moving items.

Training staff to handle, store and rotate stock properly is another key element of success. By integrating smart tracking tools, establishing consistent procedures, and ensuring staff accountability, businesses can reduce unnecessary losses, improve cash flow, and ensure fresher products reach customers.

Step 2: Upcycle and donate

Once you’ve eliminated as much upstream organic waste as possible from your business, you can also address your downstream waste by upcycling and reusing products.

Upcycling means taking food waste and turning it into another food product. For example, food service businesses (such as hotels, restaurants and even office cafeterias) can use leftover vegetables from one day to make soup for the next day.

Re-using food starts by feeding people with unsold—yet edible—materials. You can either resell unused food or donate it to nonprofit organizations, such as food banks. Reselling typically involves finding alternate avenues for selling food that would otherwise go to waste. For example, prepared items like sandwiches can be offered at a discount toward the end of the day or donated to a food bank or other not-for-profits after the close of business.

On a larger scale, reselling and donating help address one of the biggest food waste problems in the industry: the food that’s disposed of before it reaches retailers or consumers, despite being perfectly edible. While private sector initiatives and legislation are helping reduce this issue by promoting the acceptability of “ugly” produce that does not meet aesthetic standards, a substantial amount of food still goes to waste every year.

You can seek out food banks and other non-profits across the country that work closely with food retailers to collect edible food that would have been thrown out and donate it to people in need.

Transform your food waste

Instead of being extracted, used and then disposed of (what’s known as a linear economy), resources in a circular economy are recovered for reuse or reprocessing into something else within a closed loop. This uses far fewer resources—and generates fewer carbon emissions—than creating something entirely new.

A good example is that of a brewery that produces beer from recycled uneaten bread. Its principal waste by-product is draff, a malt residue leftover from the brewing process. This food waste can still go to another business, which turns it into flour to produce new foodstuffs.

Start to compost

Inedible food can be turned back into nutrient-rich soil that can be used to grow more produce. 

Composting is the final step in managing food and other organic waste, transforming it into useful soil that can be used to grow more food or other plants. This helps to create a more circular economy.

Recovering food waste reduces GHG emissions

In 2022, ReFeed diverted 4.5 million kilograms of produce from landfills at 100% utility. This represented a reduction of more than 8,600 tonnes CO₂ equivalent.

“And that’s just what we can account for directly,” notes Lilley. “The real number when you look at the impact on the whole system would be much higher.”

Food waste reduction fits into the circular economy

Louise Schwarz co-owns the Vancouver-based waste consulting firm, Recycling Alternative, with her business partner, Robert Weatherbe. It’s been providing sustainable waste diversion services for businesses, event venues and institutions in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland since 1989.

“We can’t extract resources indefinitely, so circular is the only path we can ultimately go,” says Schwarz, a recognized leader in waste management, who has worked on the National Zero Waste Council.

How to start your food waste reduction?

Begin by inquiring with your current waste management provider about the options they offer for organic waste. Some may be able to take food and other organic waste to a large-scale composting facility, with its anaerobic decomposition, where emissions will be appropriately captured.

Others may be able to assist you in setting up an on-site program. What you really want is to avoid hauling organic waste to landfills. If your waste hauler cannot offer a suitable option for organic waste, such as composting, consider incineration with energy recovery instead.

Depending on your property and the amount of organic waste you’re aiming to process, you may be able to do your own basic composting and use it to enrich the soil on your grounds. For larger amounts, consider investing in a compacting composter. These machines quickly process organic waste into a dry material that takes up 80% less space and is lighter and easier to transport.

“With these, you’re still having material hauled away, but the frequency is much lower,” Schwarz says. “And people generally find these a big improvement over loading bays full of smelly totes that sit there attracting fruit flies until they get picked up.” 

Get your employees on board

Employee engagement and behaviour are critical to the success of your waste management efforts, so be sure to include awareness campaigns and education when you launch your food and organic waste strategy.

“Even in offices, simple changes like removing deskside garbage bins can be extremely effective at reminding people of the need to separate organics and other types of waste. And if employees understand the reasoning behind it, it usually isn’t hard to get them on board,” Schwarz says.

“Most of the time, they want to help,” she says. “With waste management, they can see and understand their own impact in a way that’s much more tangible than other environmental initiatives like energy efficiency.”

Food industry: how each sector wastes

What is the government doing about food waste?

Canada is committed to reducing this waste. Since 2022, it has invested $1.4 million to support Canadian industry associations, non-profit organizations, academic institutions and local governments to take action to reduce the quantity of biodegradable waste disposed in landfills annually.

Both the federal government and several provinces have set food waste reduction targets and introduced regulations for the disposal of organic waste, including, in some cases, banning it from landfills.

How is technology changing food waste?

Whether you’re running an office building handling leftovers from employee lunches, a restaurant dealing with food preparation scraps and uneaten meals, or a producer seeking an alternative for rejected produce, waste management technologies and solutions are improving all the time.

On the consumer front, there has been a rise in mobile apps that enable people to rescue unsold food that would otherwise be thrown out.

Those are solutions that can eventually bring down the current levels of landfill emissions.

“How you do things today won’t necessarily be how you do them tomorrow,” says Weatherbe. “So, if you’re dissatisfied with your current system, keep looking. There might already be a better way.”

Next steps

Learn how to audit your business’s waste and save money in the BDC article, How to conduct a waste management audit.