Food waste
Beat the food waste ban: why you must act fast
Richard Poskitt, head of supply chain/commercial at ReFood, discusses the ban on food waste to landfill and explains why care home managers should act fast to take full advantage of the opportunities presented
The social care sector continues to experience a plethora of challenges. An aging population is putting significant pressure on residential capacity, while volatile energy prices, supply chain pressures, rising inflation, labour shortages, rent hikes, rocketing wage demands, and a widely publicised skills gap are impacting budgets, overheads, and, ultimately, bottom lines. While the sector has shouldered rising
costs for years, the pressure is starting to boil over. Even despite residential care fees being increased across the board to counteract spiralling overheads, insight from advisory firm Mazars suggests that care home insolvencies leapt 30 per cent last year. This includes the collapse of a number of major players into administration, with tens of thousands of carers and residents affected. You may argue that these pressures are not entirely nuanced to the care sector, and you would be right. It is a tough time for UK businesses full stop, with costs rising incrementally and revenues faltering across the supply chain. For social care, however, the intricacies of services provided makes managing escalating costs even more challenging.
Take utilities as an example. While some businesses may be able to streamline their energy consumption or utility spend during periods of volatile pricing, care homes often cannot. Residents need temperatures to remain high, lights to be turned on, and a wide range of care equipment to be operational around the clock. Reacting to cost volatility is simply not possible. And it is not just utilities, either. From equipment
March 2025
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com
and medicine supply to entertainment and staffing, there is often no alternative other than simply grimacing and bearing it. So how can managers tackle escalating costs? Well, while a difficult task, it is a case of streamlining and simplifying wherever possible. The economic climate is far from a short-term scenario, so resilience and planning are becoming ever more imperative to get providers through these choppy waters.
Where to start? From improving efficiencies and simplifying processes, to embracing a wide range of energy efficiency measures (such as switching to LED lighting and smart technologies), care homes are already working around the clock to address quick fixes. Contracts have often been negotiated
While most overheads have already been inspected, one area often overlooked is food waste
down. Suppliers have been squeezed. Belts have well and truly been tightened. So, there is simply no more wiggle room, then, with every possible element having already been scrutinised? Well, not entirely. While most overheads have already been inspected, analysed and dissected, one area often overlooked is food loss and waste. Interestingly, this is one of the quickest and easiest budget lines from which care homes can slash unnecessary costs. Indeed, recent statistics show that up to 40 per cent of all food served in the average care home is wasted. While some of this is unavoidable meal preparation waste (such as bones, cores, gristle, and shells), the vast majority is perfectly avoidable plate scrapings and spoiled produce. This makes planning and budgeting a hugely difficult task, with food costs placing high up the balance sheet – both in terms of purchase and disposal. After all, alongside the financial implications of buying such huge volumes of food in the first place, it is also important to question what happens to the resulting waste. Unfortunately, the unpleasant truth is that most of it is simply
43
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50
