Manufacturers

Manufacturers

Total Surplus Food  in 2023 by Manufacturers


See more in the Insights Engine
See more in the Insights Engine

Optimize The Harvest

  • Explore opportunities to expand product specifications in a way that would reduce culls and product left behind after harvest.
  • Establish advance purchase agreements with local growers to support demand planning, ensuring a more predictable supply and reducing waste from overproduction.
  • Partner with growers to adopt technologies that enable precise sorting of products, ensuring retailers receive the exact SKUs needed and reducing rejections.

Enhance Product Distribution

  • Use technology innovations that streamline product movement, such as dynamic and intelligent routing, temperature monitoring, and early spoilage detection.
  • Coordinate across the sector to develop shared economies for idle assets, such as cold storage and transportation, to expand access at lower cost and resource impact.

Refine Product Management

  • Recharge distressed sales through doubled down internal efforts or external solution providers, as there is often more opportunity there.
  • Ensure regular or automated waste tracking and measurement at regular intervals in production processes.
  • Propose new arrangements with buyers that lead to better upstream communication of demand, including data tools that could facilitate this.

Maximize Product Utilization

  • Dedicate R&D resources to create upcycled product lines for edible byproducts
  • Optimize manufacturing lines by re-enginering processes and product design to reduce waste during production and product line changeovers.
  • Implement active packaging solutions to extend the shelf life of produce, along with intelligent packaging that provides real-time freshness indicators.
  • Partner with food upcycling companies to transform byproducts into new, value-added food products.

Reshape Consumer Environments

  • Employ packaging solutions that reduce household waste, such as sub-packaging, resealing, active and intelligent packaging, smaller sizes, and usability information.
  • Implement industry-recommended standardized date labeling and extend dates for quality-based date labels where possible.
  • Leverage brand communication platforms to educate and engage with consumers to increase the value placed on food, disincentivize waste, and improve consumer food management skills.

Strengthen Food Rescue

  • Eliminate any mandatory destruction requirements in vendor agreements, allowing for donation instead.
  • Support innovation and pilots of real and near-time data-sharing technology that are informed by the type, quantity, condition, location, etc. of product nearing expiration to address time-sensitive food rescue opportunities.
  • Coordinate across the sector to develop shared economies for idle assets, such as cold storage and transportation, to expand ability to food recovery organizations access to these resources at low cost.

Recycle Anything Remaining

  • Collaborate with systems players to demonstrate demand for feedstock, generate consistent inputs, and incentivize investment in recycling infrastructure.
  • Enhance the value of nutrient-dense, fiber-rich byproducts by selling them as feedstock for animal feed and insect farming and as inputs for other industries such as pharmaceuticals and textiles.
  • Pilot distributed anaerobic digestion models behind processing facilities.
  • Partner with companies offering anaerobic digestion solutions or local waste haulers that specialize in waste diversion to ensure food scraps and other waste are properly recycled or composted.
  • Partner with vendors that provide onsite digesters or other food waste management units, along with services to responsibly handle any byproducts, ensuring they are diverted from landfills, sewer systems, and wastewater treatment plants.
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