Compass Group and its businesses around the globe are today marking the eighth annual Stop Food Waste Day, an international day of action in the fight against food waste. This global campaign aims to raise awareness of the environmental and social benefits of reducing food waste.
- Started in 2017 by Compass Group, Stop Food Waste Day is now recognised globally in every corner of the world as a day to unite to educate, inspire, and ignite change.
- Food waste is a global issue with a wide variety of environmental, social and economic impacts.
- 33% of all food produced globally is lost or wasted every single year: that translates to $1.2 trillion worth of food annually.
- Almost 50% of all fruits and vegetables produced globally every year is wasted, equivalent to about 3.7 trillion apples.
- If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emission producing country in the world.
- If 25% of the food currently lost or wasted were saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people.
For eight years now, Compass has been leading the internationally recognised Stop Food Waste Day to educate and inspire everyone to waste less, and reuse more, across its entire value chain. From consumer education and campaigns, menu planning, deploying food waste management technology and more, Compass’ frontline teams and chefs are using the Group’s scale and influence to drive change for good.
Compass aims to stop food waste through preventing, recovering and recycling. Only when food waste is unavoidable, do teams turn to redistribution and recycling to ensure good food reaches people in need. Across all of its markets, Compass businesses work with food recovery partners such as: local community food banks, food pantries as well as child meal programmes, donating a total of 1.6 million meals to local communities throughout 2023.
For Stop Food Waste Day 2024, Compass and its teams worldwide are bringing together clients, colleagues, suppliers, and charity partners across c.35 countries to inspire change. Some highlights include:
- Compass Group USA supporting Food Tank’s Waste Warrior Awards in New York City, celebrating several food waste warriors and champions, recognising them for the awareness and impact they have created for our community and beyond.
- Compass Group Sweden developing a new AI solution called ‘Unwaste Yourself’ – an innovative AI tool that is helping consumers to reduce their food waste at home.
- Compass Group chefs producing a third edition of its Digital Cookbook: featuring recipes which give a second life to ingredients that commonly go to waste, including stale bread, bruised fruit & veg and discarded peels: https://www.stopfoodwasteday.com/content/compass-group/sfwd/en/recipes-and-top-tips/sfwd-cookbook
- Hosting events at its global HQ in Chertsey, UK featuring a specially designed food waste menu.
Shelley Roberts, Group Chief Commercial Officer, Compass Group PLC, said:
“A third of all food produced globally is wasted every year, but Compass continues to lead the way on this important topic. Eight years ago, we started Stop Food Waste Day as movement to ignite change around food waste, which has since become a global phenomenon. That’s because, using our size, scale and influence, we see food waste as one of the areas where we can make the biggest difference.
Our chefs are integral to our success, driving transformational change from the bottom up through our Global Culinary Forum webinars. By working closely with our procurement teams to dial up local and seasonal sourcing and innovative supply chain solutions, they’re the ones that are really delivering for our clients.”
Petros Parras, Group Chief Financial Officer, Compass Group PLC, said:
“Tracking and reporting of waste helps us be more efficient in our operations, helping reduce costs and mitigate inflation. In 2023, we set a target to adopt food waste technology in 6,000 locations worldwide. We surpassed this target, implementing technology at 7,943 of our largest locations.
With food waste being so important to our business, we have linked it to the remuneration of executive directors and senior management. Arming our chefs with digital tools to track and measure food waste is already working, and we’re well on the way to achieving a 50% reduction by 2030.”
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Notes to editors
Started in 2017 by Compass Group, Stop Food Waste Day is now recognised globally in every corner of the world as we unite to educate, inspire, and ignite change.
Our mission is to ignite change regarding the global food waste problem. We do this by drawing attention to the issues, at the same time educating through engaging with society at all levels and sharing practical, creative, and impactful ways we can all change our behaviour to reduce food waste.
We recognise that food waste is not only a moral issue, but a key contributor to climate change too. Wasting food is a waste of the energy to grow, harvest, process and cook and food waste in landfill can cause methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas.
© 2024 Compass Group PLC