Reduce Resource Use and Manage Materials Responsibly

Prevent waste before managing it

Sustainable foodservice protects nutrition, safety, access, labor, money, and environmental resources together. Begin with the service need, then avoid creating unnecessary material and energy demand. EPA's current Wasted Food Scale replaces the older Food Recovery Hierarchy for wasted-food decisions. Its most preferred pathways are prevention, donation, and upcycling food for people; landfilling, incineration, and sending food down the drain are among the least preferred. This does not authorize unsafe donation or make every downstream option available locally. Prevent waste through accurate forecasting, smaller batches, first-expire-first-out rotation, flexible portions, appropriate choice, recipe and yield control, purchasing aligned with use, cross-utilized ingredients, safe cooling, and rapid corrective feedback. Reuse durable serviceware and transport items when sanitation, ergonomics, storage, and return logistics support it. Recycle or compost only clean streams accepted by the contracted processor. Manage oils, chemicals, lamps, batteries, refrigerants, electronics, and hazardous materials under their specific rules. Disposal remains necessary for contaminated, unsafe, or nonrecoverable material. The exam principle is to act as high in the hierarchy as safely and lawfully possible, while measuring whether the intervention shifted burden somewhere else.