International Food Loss and Waste Awareness Day (#FWLDay) was held on 29 September to draw attention to the problem of food waste and encourage action to reduce it.
To truly appreciate the immensity of the problem, it is important to recall once again the figures provided by the United Nations: globally, approximately 13% of the food produced is lost between harvesting and retailing; and in addition to this, around 19% of total food production is wasted in households, catering and retailing. In absolute figures, it is estimated that more than 1 billion food dishes are wasted every day , while the number of hungry people continues to rise.
Despite the gloomy outlook, according to the latest available data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Spain has made some progress in the fight against food waste, with a 19.6% reduction since 2020 (although the figure is still high, with 1.125 billion kilos or litres thrown away in 2024, equivalent to 24.38 kilos or litres per person per year).
Against this backdrop, mass catering plays a key role. Through concrete initiatives and practices, these services can actively contribute to reducing food waste and making progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This waste reduction can be approached in a number of areas, from menu planning, portion control, warehouse management or consumption tracking. In any of these cases, technology plays a key role, for example, through demand forecasting software, stock control applications, digitising serving or using sensors to monitor the shelf life of foodstuffs. These tools make it possible to adjust production to real needs, optimise resources and minimise surpluses, contributing to a more sustainable and efficient service.
Regulatory requirement: new Law 1/2025
As Inés García, kitchen and catering management consultant at Agar Asesoría Alimentaria, the Law for the Prevention of Food Losses and Waste in Spain (Law 1/2025, in force since last April) “affects all companies in the food chain that are not micro-enterprises and is based on a hierarchy of mandatory priorities: prevent, donate, reuse, recycle and, as a last resort, only if there is no viable alternative, eliminate“.
The new law represents a decisive step towards sustainability and the real challenge lies in the amount of extra work involved in managing all these aspects constantly, rigorously and in kitchens that serve thousands of portions every day (Food Loss and Waste Prevention plans, compulsory records, training…). This is where technology comes in to play a decisive role.
The hidden cost of food waste
Beyond the environmental cost, in social and mass catering, food waste represents thousands of euros lost every year. Every kilo of food thrown away is hours of staff time, energy, water and money off the balance sheet.
As we are told by the people in charge of Mapal, “A school canteen serving 120 menus a day can lose up to 9,000 euros a year in direct raw material costs alone. A figure which, when hidden costs are added, quickly escalates to critical levels for any organisation.
This is where technology plays a decisive role with solutions such as Mapal’s Easilys f&b, a solution for mass catering that optimises the entire management cycle and has a direct impact on reducing waste.
Easilys f&b operates in three phases: planning (management of products, suppliers, prices, recipes and menus); execution (orders, real-time stock control, inventories, production plans and logistics); decision making (cost analysis, margins, reporting and waste measurement).
Although it is not ‘waste only’ software, by integrating all these processes, Easilys has demonstrated that it can reduce food waste in the food service sector by up to 50% , as well as delivering 10% savings in product cost, 20% less overstock and +80% in task fulfilment in just two months. Undeniable figures, with a dual benefit: economic for organisations and environmental for the planet.
Measure to prevent… donate so that food doesn’t go to waste
As we have mentioned above, preventing waste is the first priority of the regulations currently in force in Spain… and in order to prevent it, first of all it is essential to measure, because measuring waste allows us to identify patterns, optimise operations and, of course, comply with the law.
Denis Ugalde, founder and CEO of Oreka Circular Economy, explains that measuring food waste is much more than a legal requirement: “is a strategic tool to improve efficiency, reduce the environmental footprint and transform a problem into an opportunity for positive impact”.
The second priority of the law is to donate. As Ugalde continues, “despite awareness-raising, projects, regulatory pressure and technology, there is still a long way to go and it is inevitable that a community centre will generate surplus, but it is up to each individual to take measures to prevent it from becoming waste”.
In this regard, Oreka Circular Economy has for years been offering an application that helps hundreds of centres to manage their surplus and channel donations in a safe and traceable way… but the novelty is that it now incorporates a free version focused on measurement, tested in more than 100 canteens and with more than 3,000 surplus records made. The application allows you to record in seconds what is left over and obtain clear indicators providing a simple overview of the surplus generated (what is wasted, in what volume and with what environmental impact) in a format designed for kitchen and management teams to use in a streamlined way and without adding to the operational burden.
It also facilitates a reliable record to respond to audits, comply with Law 1/2025 and reinforce transparency in ESG reporting, incorporating management and environmental KPIs, which turn waste into measurable and comparable figures for informed decision-making.
Hospitals, the unfinished business
Finally, it should be noted that food waste is a daily challenge in all types of communities
but especially in hospitals where it has a major economic, social and environmental impact. According to a study published in ‘Gaceta Sanitaria’in February this year, 35% of the food served in hospitals is wasted, equivalent to 953 grams per patient per day.
The same study identifies several factors that contribute to food waste in hospitals, such as lack of coordination between different actors in the healthcare system, overproduction of food and lack of awareness of the environmental impact of waste. The researchers who conducted the study highlight the need to improve hospital food management with a comprehensive response and specific tools to reduce this problem.
One of these tools is offered by Proppos, a technology that uses AI and artificial vision to provide objective information that helps to comply with regulations, optimise menus, reduce costs and move towards a more sustainable management of hospital food. Thanks to this system, not only are errors on the plating line reduced and it is possible to measure what has not been consumed after service, but the actual intake of each patient is analysed from their tray. As Nil Salomó,
CEO and co-founder of Proppos comments: “using our technology, we are able to track the tray and identify which patient it belongs to when it arrives in the kitchen. By automating this process, data becomes more objective, faster and more personalised to monitor feeding, detect possible cases of malnutrition and provide a significant improvement in care”.
This cutting-edge technology has already been implemented in leading hospitals such as Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital, Doctor Trueta Hospital and Palamós Hospital, among others. By following this link you can find more information and a document of the use case.
Fortunately, and thanks to the immense work of many professionals in the sector, mass catering is leaving behind the normalisation of throwing food away in school canteens, residences, corporate restaurants and hospitals; technology and digitalisation are helping to comply with regulations and combat waste, but we must not ‘take our eye off the ball’… there is still a lot of work to be done and little time left, since according to SDG target 12.3. “By 2030, global per capita food waste at retail and consumer level must be halved and food losses in production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses, must be reduced”.
We remind you that all the companies mentioned in the article will be present in the ‘Mass catering: meeting point’ space at Alimentaria & Hostelco, the only global event for the collective catering sector in Spain, with stands and activities as part of the programme of the seventh edition of the ‘Mass Catering Congress’.