Food Waste Action Week: Top Tips for Tackling Food Waste in the Office | Just Eat for Business

According to the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), around a third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted. As expected, it’s having a serious impact on climate change, contributing 8–10% of total man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Love Food Hate Waste has dedicated a whole week of action to raising awareness of the environmental consequences of wasting food, and promoting activities that help to reduce the amount of food we waste.

When you’re at home, there are plenty of things you can do (and likely already do) to help reduce food waste, like batch-cooking, weekly meal planning and freezing your leftovers where you can. But what about when you’re in the office? With team lunches, treats and networking events back on the cards, it’s more likely that there’ll be more food waste as we start returning to the office. 

Check out our top tips for tackling food waste:

Check who’s coming into the office 

So you don’t over-order on lunch or meeting food, check who’s planning to come into the office in advance. Even if some of your teams are WFH, they don’t have to miss out - there are plenty of options like pantry packages or Just Eat Pay, so they can enjoy food and drink wherever they are.  

Order your lunch in reusable containers

Did you know, around 500 million plastic boxes are used across the takeaway sector every year, and even if they’re reused multiple times, they almost always end up in landfill? If you’re in the mood to order some lunch in for the team, why not try ClubZero’s reusable food boxes? When you order on the Just Eat for Business platform with a participating restaurant, you can choose to opt in for reusable packaging. After you’ve enjoyed your meal, you can either arrange for the packaging to be collected through the CLUBZERO app or be able to deposit the items at designated CLUBZERO locations.

Encourage people to take home leftovers

If you do end up with extra portions, encourage people to take them home so they don’t sit in the office fridge for days on end. Even if you don’t fancy your leftover pizza or salad bowl, someone in your office probably will! You could even designate a ‘community shelf’ in your office fridge so that people know what items are free to take home. 

Have dedicated bins for food, recycling and other general waste

You probably already have a recycling bin and a general waste bin, but fewer offices have a bin for composting food scraps. Consequently, the landfill ends up with millions of banana peels, apple cores, stale biscuits, and other leftovers. Making the effort to compost your food waste not only contributes to the corporate social responsibility of a company, but it can also reduce waste collection costs, engage staff, boost morale, and promote a healthy lifestyle.

Where you can, order food that’s in season

Of course, if you have lots of people to cater for, buying seasonal food might be challenging. But if you’re buying food for a 1-1 meeting, try and do a bit of research to see what’s in season. For example, the veggies in your salad bowl will do less damage to the environment  if they haven’t had to travel half-way around the world just to end up on your plate!