Sodexo, world leader in Quality of Life services, has announced the deployment of its data-driven food waste prevention program, WasteWatch powered by Leanpath, at 35 Australian sites over the next 12 months, as part of its global objective to prevent 50% of food waste from its operations by 2025.

This announcement comes in the lead up to World Food Day, which calls for action across sectors to make healthy and sustainable diets affordable and accessible, recognising that 1.3 billion metric tonnes of food – a third of the food produced annually – is wasted or lost globally1.

The WasteWatch program, powered by food waste prevention technology provider Leanpath, will enable sites to capture food waste data, identify opportunities to reduce waste and drive operational and behavioural changes.

The program will be deployed across multiple segments in Australia, including education, corporate, healthcare, and energy and resources. Globally, WasteWatch will be deployed at 3,000 Sodexo sites within the next year, with the objective to deploy the program to all relevant sites by 2025.

Keith Weston, Director Onsite Services, Sodexo Australia said: “We believe the effects of food waste prevention are circular, reducing both the amount spent on food and the resources used to produce more food. Sodexo’s work to introduce important sustainable food initiatives into daily practice lessens our environmental footprint as part of our Better Tomorrow 2025 Corporate Responsibility Roadmap.”

Food waste prevention is an ongoing priority for Sodexo, having announced its partnership with online surplus food wholesale marketplace Yume in 2018 to divert tonnes of high-quality surplus food each year from landfill.

To date, Sodexo has purchased 40,960 kilograms of quality food from Yume, equating to 2,828,379 litres of water saved and 81,983 kilograms of CO2 emissions prevented.

Keith Weston, Director Onsite Services, Sodexo Australia said: “As a company, we are rethinking our food management by creating zero waste dishes and changing mindsets internally. We understand if we don’t take the necessary steps to reduce our food wastage now, we will not be able to nourish the world’s increasing population in the years to come.”

Sodexo has also partnered with Knorr Professional and WWF-UK, who this year collaborated to create the Future 50 Foods Report, recommending greater use of non-traditional foods which increase healthy living and reduce the negative impact of food production on the environment.

Sodexo Australia’s Food Platform chefs are creating their own ‘Future 50 Recipes’ based on ingredients from the Future 50 Foods Report, aiming to roll-out a collection of recipes to sites nationwide by the end of the year.