New solutions can help reduce food waste, CEO says

Food waste is a big focus for the produce industry to meet corporate sustainability goals and better manage produce inventories.

In this episode of the "Tip of the Iceberg" podcast, Quest Resource Management CEO Ray Hatch shares how technology can help reduce the amount of produce destined for landfills.

Hatch says the number of landfills in the U.S. continues to shrink. He says there's a roughly 20% reduction in the number of landfills in the past few years, something unlikely to change as it is difficult to open new landfills.

“So, companies and industries that have become much more creative in how they deal with the byproducts of their business,” he said. “A high percentage of the landfills are filled with organic material, and traditionally, in many cases, if not most cases, there's other places for that material to go.”

Hatch says around 10 years ago, Quest Resource Management founded a national food waste program that takes unpackaged food waste to a composter, anaerobic digestion service provider or even an animal feed processor. But three years ago the company created a program to take packaged organic goods and divert it from landfills.

“We're able to divert up to up to 80% or 90% of the organic material away from landfills,” he said. “Before, it was probably closer to 30% that was able to be diverted.”

Hatch says the companies that use this service de-package the organic food waste. Then Quest uses reverse logistics to collect the material to a distribution center and then direct it to its end use of anaerobic digestion, animal feed or compost.

“We have an example of what the customer has done the circularity aspect,” he said. “Where the material was picked up, it went through this process, it goes to the composter, it comes back to the customer in the form of gardening products they can have in a bag. It's just such a neat little symmetry that this process enables us to have.”

Hatch sees the future of food waste as being driven by the value generated from the waste.

“The more value we can create from that organic waste, the more the economics work to validate [it],” he said. “When you can create a value of that material at the end of this cycle, it makes everything else so much easier.”

Hatch says that while many retailers are motivated by consumers seeking greater transparency in food waste practices, he also foresees investors wanting companies to reach more sustainable goals driving the reductions in food waste.

“When the person who writes the checks to pay payroll [wants sustainability goals met] — it’s a pretty loud voice,” he said.

Technology, too, will play a key role in food waste in the future, Hatch says, as many retailers will seek data to measure sustainability goals.

“If you're that customer, that grocery chain, for example, you could say you're being sustainable, but if you can't validate it with data, it's a real problem,” he said.

The data Quest provides, Hatch says, helps grocers see how much waste it generates from each type of material, store-by-store on a micro and macro level, to help better fine-tune food waste programs.

Listen to this podcast episode by clicking on the embedded player above or by clicking this link.