Many businesses approach food waste by investing in composting, anaerobic digestion, or other end-of-pipe solutions. It feels like progress—waste is being "recycled" rather than landfilled.
But it's solving the wrong problem. The waste hierarchy is clear: prevention is vastly superior to recycling. And the economics back it up.
The Food Waste Hierarchy
Both EPA and EU guidance rank interventions in order of preference:
- Prevention — Don't create the waste in the first place
- Redistribution — Donate surplus to people who can eat it
- Animal feed — Feed suitable surplus to animals
- Recycling — Compost, anaerobic digestion, other biological processing
- Recovery — Incineration with energy recovery
- Disposal — Landfill
Each step down the hierarchy destroys more value and has higher environmental impact. Prevention captures 100% of the embedded value. Landfill captures zero and creates additional methane emissions.
The Financial Comparison
Consider a hotel wasting €10,000 worth of food monthly.
Option 1: Prevention (30% reduction)
- Investment: €2,000/month (monitoring system, training)
- Waste reduced: €3,000/month saved
- Net benefit: €1,000/month
- ROI: 150%
Option 2: Composting
- Investment: €500/month (segregation, collection contract)
- Waste reduced: €0 (same amount still wasted)
- Environmental benefit: Yes (no methane from landfill)
- Net benefit: -€500/month
- ROI: Negative
Prevention saves money. Composting costs money. Both have environmental benefits, but prevention's benefits are larger because you're also eliminating production emissions.
The Environmental Comparison
When food is wasted and composted:
- Production emissions are still released (farming, transport, processing)
- Energy used in preparation is still spent
- Composting releases some CO2 and potentially N2O
- Some value is recovered as compost
When waste is prevented:
- Production emissions avoided entirely
- Energy never expended
- No disposal emissions
- Full economic value retained
The carbon footprint of a kilo of beef is ~40-60 kg CO2e. Composting that beef instead of landfilling it might save 0.5 kg CO2e in methane avoidance. Prevention saves the full 40-60 kg.
Prevention is roughly 100 times better for climate than composting the same food waste.
When Recycling Makes Sense
None of this means recycling is bad. It means:
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Invest in prevention first. Don't spend on composting until you've reduced what you're wasting.
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Recycling handles unavoidable waste. There will always be some waste—bones, coffee grounds, vegetable trim that can't be used. Composting this makes sense.
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Recycling is a baseline. If your choice is landfill versus composting, composting is better. But it shouldn't distract from prevention.
The businesses that have it right invest heavily in prevention, have modest recycling programs for unavoidable waste, and landfill almost nothing.
The Marketing Trap
"We compost all our food waste" sounds good in a sustainability report. It's an easier story than "we measure waste daily, run waste audits, retrain staff quarterly, and have reduced waste by 45%."
But customers and regulators are getting more sophisticated. "Zero waste to landfill" through extensive composting is less impressive than actual waste reduction. Expect stakeholders to ask not just where waste goes, but how much there is.
Making the Investment Case
If you're debating between prevention and recycling investments:
Prevention case:
- Reduces operating costs (ROI positive)
- Addresses root cause
- Larger environmental impact
- Builds operational capability
- Prepares for future regulation
Recycling case:
- Handles waste that can't be prevented
- Required for certain waste streams (oils, bones, etc.)
- May be required by local regulations
- Easier to implement than behaviour change
- Good baseline for landfill diversion
In most operations, every €1 spent on prevention before spending on recycling will generate better financial and environmental returns.
The Recommended Approach
Phase 1: Establish measurement. You can't prevent waste you don't understand.
Phase 2: Attack preventable waste. Training, procedures, forecasting, menu engineering.
Phase 3: Optimise remaining waste handling. Donation where possible, composting/AD for remainder, minimal to landfill.
Going straight to Phase 3 without Phase 1 and 2 is throwing money at the wrong part of the problem.
Calculate what prevention could save you, or get a waste assessment that prioritises correctly.