One thing is for certain – the continued sustainability of meetings, events, and venues is on everyone’s lips. This was evident at the recent AIME event held in Melbourne in February, where organisations reiterated their commitment to sustainability efforts.
This case study serves up food waste measurement and action with International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney) – an article by Lynell Peck, Director of Culinary Services, ICC Sydney.
In this case study, ICC Sydney shares the importance of food waste reduction in achieving its social, environmental, and economic goals, how to implement and leverage food waste sorting and measurement, and the challenges and opportunities of supporting visitors and clients in saving food.
“Weighing, measuring and reducing food waste has excellent and well-documented environmental benefits, but it also makes good business sense,” says Lynell Peck, director of Culinary Services, ICC Sydney. “It helps reduce food costs, enabling chefs to continue to use the best quality ingredients and produce while providing an avenue to better support people in need in our communities”.
Scenario
ICC Sydney is situated at the intersection of Sydney’s academic, cultural and technology precincts and organises a range of events, from conventions for thousands to more intimate corporate events. Sustainability is at the core of business practices with a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme adopting a triple bottom line approach, considering ways to foster community engagement, environmental sustainability and equitable economic development.
ICC Sydney is part of a recognised Green Precinct and holds a Gold LEED certification from the US Green Building Council, a Silver EarthCheck certification and won the international UFI Sustainable Development Award for outstanding initiatives. We work proactively with their partners and clients to facilitate sustainable events while meeting environmental standards and share the important role food waste reduction plays in achieving these social, environmental and economic goals.
Measuring food waste
We know through our work with End Food Waste Australia, that food waste has significant environmental impacts, and food in landfill is a major contributor to our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. As part of our venue’s commitment to positive environmental outcomes we hope to lead the business events industry to reduce food waste.
Our team started measuring food waste to understand the type and amount of food being disposed of and to assist us in discovering opportunities to avoid over-preparation, optimise service timings, and use food more efficiently. It is a chance to gain more data about our operations to inform menu design better, serving sizes, culinary service delivery and waste management decisions for today and in the future.
Implementation
Our team members receive extensive training during orientation and ongoing training throughout the year, with engagement at interactive workshops and pop-up activations to refresh their knowledge on waste streaming and management. Those involved with separating and weighing food waste are provided with specific training, but every internal department and role at ICC Sydney plays a part in helping us to achieve our food waste diversion targets.
ICC Sydney has also invested in equipment and technology to support innovative waste diversion, such as technology tracking systems (BinTracker) and AI (Winnow).
Benefits of weighing food waste
There is always room for improvement, and we’re committed to deepening our understanding of production kitchen, event and plate food waste. By separating the production kitchen and customer waste, both from the plate and what has been offered, and looking at what it contains, we will arm ourselves with the data to best elevate our impact.
As part of our commitment to operate sustainably, we strive to divert 75% of our waste, including food waste, from landfills while continually seeking opportunities to reduce waste year on year. Measuring our food waste ensures we can also quantify our efforts and impact.
“Understanding the waste provides insights into customer behaviour and sentiment that we can leverage to inform our decisions and ultimately help protect our environment and support our community.
It also helps us understand where we can apply even more efficiency in our menu design, and work with our local suppliers and producers to further highlight NSW’s best fresh ingredients.”
Facing challenges
Our sustainable initiatives are increasingly in demand, although we do still have some way to go to educate and motivate visitors and clients to activate and more effectively utilise sustainability services at events.
Time pressures onsite at events or exhibitions can be challenging, leading to contamination of waste streams as visitors quickly dispose of their waste without taking the time to correctly choose the correct waste stream.
To help with this, we use clear bin signage for our team members and visitors to refer to. The bin covers are colour-coded for easy reference, and feature icons to identify examples of waste that can be accepted within that specific bin stream.
What works well
Our internal education campaigns designed for our team members have been very effective. With the support of ICC Sydney’s leadership who champion sustainability, we have been able to educate our team on effective food waste management.
Our Culinary Services team leads the charge. The expert in-house team of chefs have a healthy respect for the ingredients and their provenance, which underpins the thoughtful design of menus maximising the use of ingredients and produce across dishes.
Technology, such as BinTracker, has helped measure and understand our food waste baseline. This data provides insights we can leverage to improve and take further steps towards our waste reduction goals.
One of the key pillars of our CSR strategy is to Strengthen Our Communities. ICC Sydney has long-established relationships with community partners and charity groups, and we provide food donations for safe, unserved food. Since opening in December 2016, the culinary team has donated 34.6 tonnes of food to community partners, including the Matthew Talbot Hostel, to provide nutritious meals for men experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity.
Next steps
Winnow units have been a recent addition to our culinary services, aimed at educating chefs and front-of-house teams on reducing food prep and buffet waste through effective monitoring and real-time data reporting. It will take some months to see measurable results, but the focus is on encouraging team participation in the effective use of the units.
As we plan for the year ahead, we are looking to more accurately measure food waste and understand the types of food that are left on buffets following events. This will help us determine what our clients and attendees are enjoying, what they are not consuming, where we can prevent food from going to waste and what dishes we should offer more of.
We will continue to collaborate with all tiers of government and through industry bodies to influence and advocate for food waste reduction strategies as we look to implement food waste minimisation – above and beyond food waste diversion.
Tips for others looking to get started
- Separate and measure your food waste
- Leverage solution providers who can make measurement easier
- Use the data to inform action
- Set an organisational food waste target
- Involve the whole team, set KPIs, and talk about food waste regularly as a team
- Coloured bin lids and easy-to-understand signage to help minimise contamination.
This case study was developed as a part of the NSW EPA Catering Toolkit project, developed by End Food Waste Australia in collaboration NSW EPA and industry, including International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney).
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