As the food and beverage industry unlocks the next wave of innovation, food waste presents a big challenge and opportunity to create climate impact and technological advancement. 

At this year’s Natural Products Expo West 2025, which is underway in Anaheim, California, the US from March 4-7, Food Ingredients First reports live as industry experts discuss how companies can identify areas that can reduce risk, increase efficiency, and build revenue in the food waste space while tackling emissions.

“Everything has a value within the food system if it’s nutritional, functional, or a processing aid. When we look at traditional food manufacturing, we’ve always accepted loss within our systems,” notes Christina O’Keefe, head of Sustainability-North America, Kerry Ingredients.

She explains that maximizing food production means maximizing the use of agricultural commodities to their full extent, which has many benefits, such as lower carbon and lower use of water and land resources.

“Most importantly, when we think about the cost of food, you get growth in your margins and bottom line. If you can reduce losses within the system, that’s money out of your pocket.”

O’Keefe notes the technical feasibility of incorporating processes like upcycling into operations to reduce food waste while offering nutritional, functional, or taste improvements and ensuring a consumer’s willingness to buy the end product.

“We could probably do everything right to eliminate food loss, such as manufacturing, adding more equipment, putting more capex in, but there may not be commercial viability. So I think we have to be realistic about what is available.”

Leveraging pre-competitive spaces

The experts agree that, amid constraints related to investment and uptake, collaboration is necessary to enhance resources and crack down on food waste at the operations stage.

Sara Burnett, executive director at ReFED, highlights the importance of pre-competitive spaces, wher retailers and foodservice players can discuss best practices to tackle food waste and conduct pilots collaboratively.

“The two [resources] I would call out in particular is the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment (PCFWC), which is on the West Coast of North America and extends up into Canada. They’ve seen amazing success in their retailers alone. Over three years, they saw a 25% reduction in unsold food and increased donations and composting. That is a collaboration between brands themselves along with government organizations.”

“The same goes for the US Food Waste Pact, which goes across the country and is run by ReFED and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Pre-competitive spaces allow you to get more information and learn from other brands.”

Burnett also notes that the ReFED Insights Engine offers a food waste monitor, allowing organizations to “deep-dive” into wher waste comes from.

Additionally, the nonprofit’s Impact Calculator can help develop sustainability cases for businesses by estimating the carbon, water, and methane footprint of food going into landfills and how many meals one could potentially donate instead in a calculation that “takes about five seconds.”

Renne McKeon, Sustainability and CSR VP, Corporate Services at Sodexo, notes that the company is a member of the US Food Waste Pact and the PCFWC. She says pre-competitive partnerships help Sodexo modify operations as needed with insights and research.

“We’re very close to hitting our internal food waste reduction target for backup house or pre-consumer food waste. The next frontier is plate waste. We worked with WWF on some pilots, which will be deployed this year.”

“When a consumer wastes, it’s for three main reasons. One, they were over-served by somebody. Two, they over-served themselves if it was self-service. And three, they didn’t like it, which, unfortunately, is just inevitable sometimes.”

“So we can take what we learn from partners and put them into action, whether providing smaller portions, a la carte options, or samples. How engaging, if the chef is out there saying, ‘We’ve got a new dish that’s going to be on the menu next week, would you like to try it and give us your feedback?’”

Gamification and the human touch

McKeon says the human component is crucial to the food waste movement. In addition to partnering with Feeding America, under which donations to food banks are encouraged, Sodexo has developed internal resources such as the Food Recovery Toolkit for operators.

Gamification is used at both Sodexo and Kerry Ingredients for education and engagement among clients and employees.

“Our partnership with Leanpath, for example, has an ‘instant win’ feature on the tool. We can have a team member weigh the waste instantly, be recognized by their manager, and be incentivized. We’ve also developed a competition in February wher every site with a Leanpath, and even those that don’t and are managing their waste more manually, participate.”

O’Keefe of Kerry Ingredients agrees on the opportunities for gamification.

“We use it at Kerry, too, to educate our operators on the floor through our CEO. We use games to engage and educate them on many different topics, but food waste is one of them.”