数据如何推动可持续食品解决方案

Roughly one-third of all food produced globally is lost or discarded annually—resulting in people wasting a staggering one billion tonnes of food every year.

From the agricultural source of produce to meals finally being served up, every aspect of the food production cycle has an environmental impact—and can create a significant amount of waste, 哈米什·库克解释道, 国际空间站集团食品亿宝彩票app官网部主管.

“这是一个需要集体解决的大领域,哈米什说。, whose role involves setting the strategic direction of the business’s global food operations. “过去十年, 企业已经更加敏锐地意识到可持续性, 而食物浪费议程已成为一个关键焦点.”

So how can companies effectively change their methods when it comes to serving meals to their workforce? With over one million customers served across more than 20 countries each day, 国际空间站 has dedicated in-house experts such as Hamish who find solutions to help tackle this challenge for clients. Key to their strategy is leveraging data and insights around food production and customer behaviours to help pinpoint areas for improvement. “People need to be measuring food waste on a daily basis, not just when there’s a problem,” he says.

批判性地思考数据 

First, Hamish explains, clients must understand where waste is being generated from. 要做到这一点, 国际空间站 uses an AI-based kitchen waste management system that analyses food waste across its global portfolio of businesses. 国际空间站 collects data from thousands of 国际空间站 locations and through the millions of transactions that occur 每周.

“利用这些数据, 我们发现，生产辅料, plate waste and over production of main meals contribute to almost 60% of the total food waste generated in our business,哈米什解释道。. These insights have helped 国际空间站 work with local site teams to strategically plan menus and optimise food portions as well as set specific targets for each country. Reviewing data sets to understand the nuances of individual locations as part of wider global trends is essential, 哈米什补充道.

“It was important for us to be clear about how we were going to measure greenhouse gas emissions and food waste,他解释道. This included taking guidance from the World Resources Institute and Winnow, 商业食品垃圾解决方案, on how the company should be categorising waste and emissions across the total food lifecycle and communicating that across the global business.

Hamish explains that the frequency with which organisations review their data is important. “这是每天审查数据的纪律, 每周, monthly—and then putting in corrective actions at a site or micro-level—that has been the basis for our success.”

Technologies can help companies to gather information at different sites. An innovative way 国际空间站 has been able to leverage data is through sensor technology. This not only helps capture how many people go into the office each day but also how many eat at the on-site restaurant. “跟踪这些模式确实有助于我们最大限度地减少浪费.”

这项技术现在有95%的准确率, 这有助于网站通过提前计划来最大限度地减少浪费. 通过这些数据洞察, 国际空间站目前的集体年储蓄率为985,为顾客处理了1000吨食物垃圾. That is equivalent to saving 2,463,000 meals and reducing CO2 emissions by 4,200 tonnes.  

改变行为 

It is important for companies to use data-led initiatives outside of the kitchen, too—educating office users and encouraging them to make more sustainable decisions around food. “We have technology that informs a customer of how much food they’re wasting when they’re scraping their plate,哈米什补充道。. “在一些地方, we contextualise this information to show how many car journeys a meal would translate to in order to help make the data tangible for customers.”

This is just one way 国际空间站 is helping their clients and customers to be more conscious about their choices. “食物是一种情感产品，”哈米什说. “Everybody has a view and a comparison set about what food they think people want to eat—but we’re seeing an eagerness from clients to have discussions based on data and facts, 是什么在帮助我们推动行为改变.”

In 2020, 国际空间站 set targets to reduce food waste across the business by 50% by 2027 as well as decrease the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from 到2030年，食品购买量减少25%.

仅在2023年上半年, 国际空间站 has seen a 在2019年的食物浪费基准水平上减少30%. From applying these insights in the workplace to changing people’s behaviours surrounding food, a real understanding of global and local trends—and collaboration from across the business—is vital to implement these changes.

“解决食物浪费问题没有一劳永逸的办法,哈米什解释道, 而是“通过定期开展不同的活动, we can make sure they add up to major performance changes across the organisation.”