Not going to waste

The figures are quite staggering. More than 251,000 tonnes of food is wasted in Australian institutions a year, representing 3.5 per cent of all food waste.

In aged care alone, each of the country’s 2,600-or so residential facilities chucks around $1,000-worth of food in the bin each week.

“That works out to be 3.5 kilograms of food per resident,” Dr Kate Sansome tells Australian Ageing Agenda.

Sansome is one of a team of researchers at the University of Adelaide leading a project to understand the causes of food waste within the aged care sector and identify effective strategies to reduce leftovers.

As well as environmental impacts – such as methane emissions from landfill – Sansome says food waste also has direct repercussions for residents.

“If there are resources going down the drain, that might mean that the aged care facility isn’t able to deliver quality care in other areas. If providers were able to recoup those costs that might mean they were able to hire more staff to deliver better care to the residents or perhaps buy better quality food that the resident is more likely to eat.”

There are many reasons for the high levels of food wastage in aged care, says Sansome – who has recently talked with food service managers, kitchen hands, dietitians and chefs.

It’s important you have the right people with the right skills managing the systems and processes

From those interviews, Sansome discovered overregulation to be one of the causes of food waste.

“People have said that there is this culture of being scared of being caught out by the aged care commission or being critiqued by family of people in aged care facilities.”

This, says Sansome, can lead to an over-serving of food “when perhaps the resident isn’t hungry or when they know the resident isn’t going to eat a whole plateful – but they’ll serve that anyway.”

Food safety measures also come into play.

“If you were at home you might say, ‘Okay, this is food that is likely still edible and is going to be safe to eat’. In a kitchen environment in an aged care facility, you might think it’s better to just throw it out rather than take the risk,” says Sansome.

The solution? Sansome tells AAA measuring and monitoring food waste is the place to start.

“Say the potatoes are constantly getting wasted, then the facility might need to make a change in how they’re cooking the potatoes or maybe change the supplier or maybe have a conversation with the residents to find out why they’re not eating the potatoes.”

Some providers are ahead of the game and on top of the problem.

Melissa Argent – chief executive officer of Queensland provider Rockpool – tells AAA food waste can be controlled.

“There is incredible technology that can support us,” she says.

“Whilst it’s difficult to manage and it takes a team to do so, we’re much better equipped to understand what our residents’ needs and wants are; what their preferences are. And, more importantly, managing the food waste on the back end.”

Rockpool employs specialist food service teams who are hospitality trained to help manage food waste.

“It’s important that you have the right people with the right skills managing the systems and processes,” says Argent.

Using an app, Rockpool hospitality and services manager Greg Bear and his team can precisely evaluate the amount of food residents consume.

“We can track at the back end what our residents are eating. We can track if they’ve eaten 50 or 75 per cent of their meal,” says Bear – who has 30 years’ experience in hospitality, working in five-star hotels and three-hat restaurants. 

The app also allows residents to choose plate proportions, says Bear.

“Do they want a small meal one day because they’re feeling poorly or do they want a medium or a large meal – do they want seconds? We can track that and see that, which helps us a lot with our purchasing and recipe development.”

Rockpool’s food waste program extends from the supplier to the plate – and beyond.

“We process all of our organic waste,” says Bear.

Bio-macerators have been installed in each of Rockpool’s four sites. A bio-macerator is a food-waste digester capable of reducing solids to liquid.

“It’s something that we have as part of our overall sustainability focus,” says Argent. She tells AAA the provider is mindful of its environmental footprint.

“We’re big machines – there are 150 residents per home. We go through an enormous amount of food, so we made the decision to monitor and eventually assist with that food wastage. It is something fundamental to what we do.”

Once liquified, the organic waste is transported to the Gold Coast where it’s turned into agriculture fertiliser. Every month, each site diverts three-and-a-half to five tonnes of food waste from landfill.

“When you look at those sorts of figures, it’s quite amazing,” says Bear.

Sansome tells AAA of other innovative food waste solutions.

“There are facilities popping up in Australia that don’t have kitchens,” she says. “Instead, there might be a café where the residents go and order food themselves when they’re hungry – that’s one way to reduce waste.”

Another solution is to offer on-demand food service delivery. “So they’re ordering food when they’re hungry; they’re ordering food that they want to eat. It’s about thinking about ways that we could allow for a bit more flexibility and choice, but still ensuring that residents are getting the amount of food that they need.”

As part of the food waste research project – funded by End Food Waste Australia – providers and other stakeholders are invited to participate in a series of workshops being held in October and November.

“The workshops will bring a range of people together into one room to brainstorm the root causes of food waste in the sector as well as to generate solutions relevant to the sector,” says Sansome.

The Aged & Community Care Providers Association and the Institute of Hospitality and Health Care are both project partners.

“Hopefully we can provide some solutions for them so that they could then integrate them into some of their training or share our findings,” says Sansome.     

Argent is more than happy to share Rockpool’s findings. “It’s constantly evaluating how much food we’ve got – what can we do better,” she says. “The technology helps us analyse that. It’s where the future lies.”

Those wishing to participate in the research workshops can email kate.sansome@adelaide.edu.au

The tech analysing leftovers

Australian-designed technology is using artificial intelligence and advanced imaging techniques to measure the nutritional value of food served in residential care homes.

By capturing precise 3D images of meals both before and after they’re served to the resident, the tool is also able to monitor food waste.

“Because we are measuring the leftovers on the plate we can also provide information and analytics on the waste on the plate,” says Abbas Bigdeli – chief executive officer of AerVision, the company that developed the tech.

“When the plate comes back, we can measure what’s left over so that way we can report on intake.”

The tool – AerMeal – records and stores the data on a cloud-based platform, accessible to clinical teams for monitoring and management purposes.

Bigdeli tells AAA the tech is currently being used in around 30 aged care homes in New South Wales and Queensland. It has also been adopted in healthcare and hospitality settings in the United Kingdom, Canada and Belgium.

AerMeal has two key features – it scans the food and measures its volume.

“Using AI machine learning we can recognise what is on the plate in terms of food categories – if it’s a protein, if it’s chicken, fish, vegetable,” says Bigdeli.

“Secondly, with the depth camera we can measure the volume of it as well. So we can say how many cubic millimetres of mashed potato or salad is on the plate. The fact that we can measure the volume, means we can calculate the nutritional value of the food.”

Bigdeli tells AAA he’s hoping for federal funding to roll out the technology across the aged care sector.

“Because, at the end of the day, it is improving the bottom line for the government by reducing the chance of malnutrition.”

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