Compass Group Canada Case Study: How We Are Taking Action and Tackling Food Waste in Our Operations

At Compass Group Canada, our passion for food runs deep, and as the world’s leading foodservice provider, we are taking action against food waste through our global Stop Food Waste Day campaign.

Stop Food Waste Day has become the largest single day of action in the fight against food waste. Each year in April, this global Compass Group initiative aims to raise awareness and encourage communities to reduce their food waste. At Compass, we’ve made a milestone commitment to cut our food waste in half by 2030 AND, through our Planet Promise commitment, to reach Climate Net Zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across our global operations and value chain by 2050.

We are taking bold steps to make it happen, and as we wrap up Stop Food Waste Day and Earth Month this year, we are sharing a look into two of our newest and most innovative technologies that are helping us take action and tackle food waste within our operations.

ORCA

In September 2022, we introduced a new technology called ORCA, an innovative clean food waste solution, to one of our Compass Group Canada facilities. By simply using air, along with water and microbiology, ORCA turns food waste into an environmentally safe liquid that is able to drain into existing sanitary sewer infrastructure.

Since then, this technology has resulted in 14.61kg less methane gas generated and 19.78 tons less CO2 equivalent GHGs at Elim Village Retirement Community located in Vancouver, British Columbia – an extremely impressive start to our partnership with ORCA!

Winnow

In 2021, we began working with Winnow, an AI tool, to track and measure our food waste by using their in-depth analytics platform and reporting suite. This allowed us to accurately pinpoint where we were seeing the largest areas of food waste and work to reduce these numbers significantly.

In the first 6 months of our partnership, we saw remarkable results from one of our Compass Group Canada facilities in Milton, Ontario, Milton Cook Chill. Winnow helped us save more than $32,000, reduced our food waste by 18%, avoided 5.1 tons of CO2e gas emissions and put us on track to prevent 1.2 tons of food waste from landfills in 2023!

Food Waste in Canada

Now, you may be reading this and thinking “of course food waste is a problem for a foodservice company” but the truth is, food waste is also a significant issue in the everyday Canadian household.

In 2022, the National Zero Waste Council conducted a household food waste survey, and the results found that in the average Canadian household, 63% of food that is thrown away could have been eaten – which amounts to 140 kilograms of wasted food per year, at a cost of more than $1,300 per year!

For Canada as a whole, that amounts to almost 2.3 million tonnes of edible food wasted each year, costing Canadians over $20 billion! To put that in perspective, every day in Canada we waste 2.6 million potatoes (that’s the the same as 553 CN Towers!) 1.3 million tomatoes, 1.3 million apples, 1 million cups of milk, 650,000 loaves of bread, 640,000 bananas, 470,000 eggs and 130,000 heads of lettuce!

So, we shared how we are continuing to take action and tackle food waste in our operations – what can you do to take action in your community? We have some tips!

We created a Food Waste Digital Cookbook, featuring recipes from over 50 Compass chefs across nearly 40 countries. The cookbook makes it easy to create meals which give a second life to ingredients that most commonly go to waste. Flip to page 32 to try Canada’s Chef Kory DiPucchio’s Gourmet Panzanella Salad!

Tried a recipe? Take a picture, share on social and tag @CompassGroupCan – we’d love to see your at-home creations!  While there, check out other great food waste reduction tips available in our SFWD highlight.

Together, we can make a meaningful impact in the fight against food waste.