Five steps to reduce waste in food and beverage production
Food waste has been identified by food and beverage producers as one of the top three environmental sustainability issues impacting their business strategy today.1 Our recent survey revealed that 57% of manufacturers have already committed to reducing food waste in their production plants. With costs rising and the availability of raw materials becoming increasingly unpredictable, minimising waste is not only prudent but essential. In addition, upcoming regulations, such as the European Union’s Farm to Fork strategy, will introduce new expectations for producers as the union strives to make food systems, as they put it, “fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly".2 Beyond food waste, the industry also aims to curtail other forms of waste, including chemicals and hazardous materials.
To initiate your waste reduction strategy, it is essential to begin with an objective evaluation of the current status of your operations. In a sustainability assessment, we can work with you to identify how and where your factory generates waste, and propose some quick wins and longer-term improvement measures.
Here are five practical steps for reducing your waste, offering five different, but not mutually exclusive, ways to approach this issue.
Optimising resource use is a key principle of modern equipment design, and that includes waste reduction. One example of a modern technology that reduces waste is the Tetra Pak® Industrial Protein Mixer. By eliminating all unwanted foaming in liquid protein mixing, this innovative mixer reduces expensive product losses and raises product quality. It also decreases the need for cleaning and maintenance of downstream equipment, leading to more efficient operations.
Another good approach to reducing waste is to capture and reuse lost product. In the manufacturing of dairy, whey-based and plant-based foods, for example, membrane filtration solutions effectively separate and purify liquids, enabling the recovery of valuable ingredients that would otherwise be discarded. Membrane filtration is used in dairy processing to reclaim proteins and other nutrients from whey, which can then be repurposed into high-value products like protein supplements.
Is your existing packaging and processing equipment delivering the best possible results? If not, you might consider reducing waste by upgrading your production lines in simple, effective ways. In ice cream processing, for example, control upgrade for freezers can detect and regulate inconsistencies, enabling more predictable results and reducing the amount of discarded product. Meanwhile, ice cream video care employs cameras at sensitive points on your ice cream line to pick up quality issues and resolve them quickly – another effective way of reducing waste.
Selecting the right consumables can also help extend equipment lifetime and lower consumption. For example, the ATP-based rapid microbial detection technology improves production release screening by reducing incubation times and increasing the accuracy of bacterial detection, particularly in the production of aseptic juice, dairy, and plant-based products. This enables a faster response to contamination, thereby minimising product spoilage.5
Waste reduction in other areas – not just product – is also worth considering. On your packaging lines, for example, adding an oil filtering unit to your hydraulic system means the same oil can be recirculated for 4,000 hours instead of 2,000 hours, potentially saving 60 litres of hydraulic oil over a three-year period.6
Under pressure to cut costs and reduce waste, producers in the food and beverage industry are developing new solutions to repurpose side streams from production.
One notable example is brewers’ spent grain (BSG), a by-product of the brewing process. Due to rapid spoiling, many tonnes of BSG used to end up in landfills or animal feed products. Now, thanks to a new sterilisation process, BSG can be turned into a liquid ingredient rich in both fibre and protein.
Another example of how additional value can be extracted from raw ingredients is found in our whole soya processing method. Thanks to a special grinding method, this technology enables 100% of the soya bean to be utilised, effectively eliminating all okara waste.
To successfully tackle waste in your business, your whole team needs to make it their common goal. You can facilitate this by implementing waste monitoring and digital decision support tools that help drive your waste reduction agenda.
For example, a digital tool like Tetra Pak® Connected Workforce empowers your staff with the knowledge they need to perform tasks effectively. By providing engaging and accessible on-the-job learning and easy knowledge sharing, Tetra Pak® Connected Workforce can positively impact many areas of your operations, not only waste reduction.
A study comparing two similar juice production plants over a four-year period – one with our automation platform Tetra Pak® PlantMaster, and one without – revealed that the automated plant reduced its waste by approximately 45% compared to the non-automated plant. This result was attributed to several factors, including the availability of reliable data and the operators’ ability to translate it into tangible results.
Are you interested in saving water and chemicals in your operations?
The above five steps are broad approaches for reducing waste in your food and beverage manufacturing operations, with concrete suggestions for implementing them. Get in touch today, and our experts will work with you to identify opportunities to reduce waste across your operations.
1 Tetra Pak Business-to-Business Research on Planetary Challenges and Their Impact on Food and Beverage Manufacturers, 2023, n= 346
2 https://food.ec.europa.eu/horizontal-topics/farm-fork-strategy_en
3 Typical production scenario based on on-site experience of customers’ protein powder processing. 300 working days/yr, 35,000kg batch size, 4 batches/day and a €6/kg DM product cost.
4 Using reverse osmosis solution, compared to not using any recovery solutions.
5 Compared to production release screening without Rapid Microbial Detection.
6 Based on filling machine running 4,000 hrs/yr without the kit installed
7 https://www.tetrapak.com/insights/cases-articles/how-automation-improves-efficiency-quality-waste