TARGET–MEASURE-ACT – WRAP’s simple principles of food waste prevention.
Many food professionals recognise the importance of reducing the food wasted across the Hospitality and Food Service sector as well as its benefits to the business/organisation of cutting costs.
Making it happen can seem like a daunting task on top of your other responsibilities. Implementing Target-Measure-Act will help you set up a robust, realistic and achievable action plan that can easily be embedded within your everyday food processes.
Target-Measure-Act is at the heart of WRAP’s Food Waste Reduction Roadmap (FWRR). To keep your food waste reduction plans on track why, not sign up to the FWRR and make a more formal commitment?
So how do you implement Target-Measure-Act?
TARGET – set your target
The first step is to set your target.
Aim for a target that is SMART, particularly one that is realistic and achievable, producing outcomes you are able to maintain moving forwards without slipping back into old habits.
We recommend the starting point is to adopt the SDG12.3 goal of 50% food waste reduction by 2030, or one that exceeds this. You can then set your business/organisation milestones over the next few years to be able to reach this goal.
Use our simple and quick Savings calculator to help set your targets and it’ll show you how much money and carbon you could save.
MEASURE – measure your food waste
The next step is to measure the food you waste on a daily basis by setting up a system that’s robust, accurate and manageable.
Why? – there is a lot you can learn from understanding what you waste and how and when it happened. It’ll help you and your team learn how to prevent the food waste from occurring next time.
We have some resources on the website you can download and use.
Things to consider are:
- What space can you make available to set up your containers to measure your food accurately as an ongoing process?
- Select suitable containers to measure food waste from different stages of your daily food processes – spoilage, preparation, plate waste and other.
- Use our daily food waste tracker forms and track your food waste daily. Online is best to help you automate your calculations and reports.
- Ensure you set up a regular reporting system that shares data with all staff, including the CEO and senior team. You may find it easier to record your data in our 4-weekly Food tracking calculator – it does all the hard work for you!
- Important – keep up your food waste measuring routine as it’ll help you monitor the effectiveness of your solutions and keep track of other problematic areas of food waste that may arise.
- Important – share your food waste data annually with us at WRAP, via the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap. This helps us track the progress across the sector.
ACTION – take action to reduce your food waste
Once you have enough food waste data, which could be after a couple of weeks or a month, analyse it to explore where you are wasting the most food and the reasons behind this.
Discuss this as a team to generate simple solutions.
Select a couple of your solutions that tackle the worst areas of food waste and trial them over a period of time to select the ones that generate the greatest impact and which can easily be embedded within your Standard Operating Procedures.
Once this action has been adopted, review your food waste data and look for other areas where you can reduce your food waste further.
Use your food waste data to track progress against your target.
And remember to celebrate your success with
your team, senior management and customers!