While Google has long focused on making sure they run their kitchens efficiently and minimize food waste, the pause on food service brought on by the pandemic gave the tech giant a chance to step back and evaluate how they could do an even better job.
Now, with workers heading back to the office, Google plans to double down on food waste reduction. In a new initiative announced yesterday in a blog post by Google’s VP of Workplace Programs, Michiel Bakker, Google will aim to cut food waste in half for each employee and send zero food waste to the landfill. The effort will achieve its aims through an increased focus on food sourcing and procurement, improved monitoring in the company’s kitchens and cafes, and ensuring food is repurposed or disposed of properly.
The new initiative builds up efforts by Google to fine-tune their kitchens using cutting-edge technology. At the end of 2020, the company took an initiative that had been in development in its moonshot factory called Project Delta, which had helped grocers like Kroger reduce food waste and started rolling it out to its kitchens across Alphabet. The company also uses machine vision technology from Leanpath to help their chefs monitor where food is going and how much is going to waste.
While it’s easy to think a company like Google relies solely on high-tech approaches to reduce food waste, efforts over the past two years have relied on a variety of creative approaches ranging from engineering employee behavior changes to rethinking the company’s food systems.
In an interview with Fast Company, the head of Google’s Food for Good program, Emily Ma, describes one example of how the company looked at ways to prompt behavior changes in Google employees through simple nudges.
“Even the size of the scoop you get makes a difference,” Ma says. In a few cafes, the company serves plated meals, so cafe staff can control portions, but that isn’t a viable option everywhere, she says. At a buffet, shrinking the size of plates or bowls helps since people otherwise often end up taking more than they actually want to eat. Simple signs reminding people to just take what they need—and that they can always come back for more—can also help.
The company is also working to change its meal recipes to use more upcycled food and is working to create more circular food systems within Google. In one program, the company has been testing feeding food scraps to black soldier flies, which are then fed to chickens which lay eggs that Google buys back.
Finally, Google is working with other organizations to help push the industry towards more data-driven solutions to end food waste. As part of the new effort, Google has donated $1 million to ReFED as an anchor funder for the food waste reduction organization’s new Catalytic Grant Fund, a five-year initiative to distribute $10 million in recoverable and non-recoverable grants to organizations working on initiatives across the food waste prevention.
“We aim to drive technology, process, policy and infrastructure innovation where it is most needed, because we know the biggest impact will come when the entire industry is empowered to keep food from going to waste,” said Ma in the announcement made with ReFED.
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