Food Waste Reduction Toolkit

In partnership with the University of Otago

How to use this toolkit

This toolkit is designed to be used as a guided pathway, rather than a checklist. Evidence from aged care settings shows that food waste reduction is most effective when organisations first understand their current food waste and then use this information to build shared commitment and realistic goals, before implementing targeted interventions.

The sections that follow are ordered to support this process:

• Step 1: Understand your food waste and set intentions

Measurement helps you establish a baseline understanding of where, how, and why food waste is occurring in your organisation.

Goal Setting & Commitment uses this evidence to set realistic reduction targets, clarify roles, and build shared ownership across teams.

• Step 2: Take targeted action

Interventions and resources

This toolkit organises evidence-informed interventions around the aged care food service cycle, from planning and preparation to service and waste. By focusing on the whole system, teams can identify where food waste occurs in their own setting and select practical actions that align with existing workflows, roles, and capacity.

You don’t need to follow every step or implement every intervention. Many organisations start small, build on existing practices, and gradually expand as confidence, data, and engagement grow. The toolkit is designed to be flexible, allowing you to trial, adapt, or discontinue actions to suit your context.

Measurement

The first step in reducing food waste is understanding how much food waste you are currently producing, where it is occurring, and the key contributors to this waste. This will enable you to make data informed decisions about where best to focus your food waste reduction efforts. It will also provide you with baseline data for you to track progress. The most common way to gather this information is by completing a food waste audit.

Goal settings & commitment

Setting a food waste reduction target is essential for driving change. Setting a target states your ambition, and ambition motivates action. With clear targets in place, organisations can track progress, celebrate success, and make meaningful strides towards reducing food waste.

Step 2:Take targeted action

Once you have an understanding of your food waste, the next step is to take targeted action. This section presents evidence-informed interventions organised around the aged care food service cycle, reflecting the reality that food waste is generated across everyday operations. You can move through the cycle to explore specific intervention areas, or start where you see the greatest opportunity based on your data, priorities, and team capacity.

Figure 1: Aged Residential Care Foodservice Cycle

Before implementing intervention components, we recommend developing an implementation plan. This can help clarify who will be making changes, what will change in practice, and what support is needed to enable success. Implementation planning helps ensure staff have the necessary resources, knowledge, capacity, autonomy, and authority to enact change within their roles. A template is provided here (Download implementation plan), or you may use another planning tool that is already familiar within your organisation.

Menu

Menus play a central role in shaping residents’ expectations, choices, and enjoyment of meals. Intervention components in this area focus on making menus clearer, more engaging, and more responsive to residents’ preferences, while retaining flexibility for chefs and food service teams to adapt offerings over time.

Ordering

Autonomy and control over one's environment are valued in the long-term care sector, particularly residential aged care. Allowing residents to select their meal portions provides residents with a level of control over their own choices. Furthermore, in care homes and hospital-level care, patients have a higher level of meal service satisfaction when appropriate meal portions are provided. Therefore, allowing residents to dictate their preferred serving size at the point of service may be a way to increase resident satisfaction and reduce food waste.

Preparation, Plating and Service

Preparation, plating, and service are critical stages in the food service cycle that shape residents’ mealtime experience and strongly influence how much food is eaten or wasted. Everyday practices at these points can either support food enjoyment, dignity, and nutrition, or unintentionally contribute to uneaten meals and waste.

Leftovers

The best way to manage food waste is to prevent it from happening in the first place. When surplus food does occur, it should first be repurposed - served as leftovers, transformed into soups or smoothies, or used for texture-modified meals. If still unused, options like selling through an on-site café or offering to staff can help minimise waste. As a last resort, surplus food can be redirected for animal feed, composting, or anaerobic digestion - keeping landfill as the very last option. Every step up the hierarchy means less waste and more value from our food.

Feedback

Feedback plays a critical role in aligning food service with resident preferences and reducing avoidable food waste. Closing the feedback loop, by collecting input, taking action, and reporting changes back to residents, supports continuous improvement across meal quality, service, and resident experience.

Communication

Effective communication and collaboration are essential for effective food waste reduction. By working together with staff within and between departments, food waste reduction becomes a shared responsibility and less burdensome.