Anne Garsztka, Senior Program Officer for Circular Supply Chain Business Engagement at the World Wildlife Fund, spoke at WasteExpo 2025 this May about work conducted by the U.S. Food Waste Pact and Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment centering around engaging employees in food waste reduction. (ReFED andWorld Wildlife Fund are co-leads of the U.S. Food Waste Pact and resource partners of the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment.) Anne sat down with us to talk about her panel, the audience reaction to it, and what’s to come for this food waste reduction strategy.
Tell us about your panel.
I was on a panel called “Engaging Frontline Employees to Achieve Food Waste Reduction and Cultural Change: Lessons from the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment.” On the panel with me was Christine Gallagher, the Sustainable Operations Manager for Ahold Delhaize USA, a retail signatory of the U.S. Food Waste Pact.
What was the main message of the panel?
The core of our discussion was about the value of employee insights when it comes to making lasting change—like evolving operations to cut down on food going to waste. In an earlier session, someone had mentioned that food waste was an asset. Whether it’s donating food to make sure that people eat it or upcycling surplus food into new products, food waste can be transformed into something valuable. We liked that framework, so we made it clear in our presentation that employee insights are also an asset. All levels of a business might be aware of food waste and what the business is doing to address it, but frontline workers are the ones that actually see it. They work with it. They deal with it. Worst case scenario, they slip and fall on it. Best case scenario, they make sure it gets to the right destination, the right bin, the right refrigerator, the right freezer. They’re the ones who actually make sure it doesn’t end up in the landfill. They’re the ones who are most knowledgeable about it, so their insights are an asset when it comes to developing strategies to actually reduce food waste.
How did session attendees react or respond to the presentation?
They reacted quite positively. I think that there were a lot of folks who were intrigued by the impact that our pilots had—for example, one pilot at Bob’s Red Mill reduced food waste by 70% just by tightening a single screw on a production line. And they were curious about how those who carried out the pilots found the lead frontline worker, or just more generally how pilot facilitators got workers engaged.
For example, at Ahold, their employee engagement started out as an informal program that became more formal over time. So Christine discussed the mechanisms of growth around finding frontline workers and formalizing frontline-worker engagement.
We also talked about a gamification pilot at Dole, which was more about getting everybody on the same page. That piece of our presentation really focused on building a foundation or a baseline across different levels of a team.
What were some of the questions you got from the audience?
We got a lot of questions about implementing these kinds of programs. Was it hard? Was it easy? What would you do differently? Basically a bunch of questions about how the programs were implemented, how the pilots were carried out, and how the process can be replicated.
Someone followed up with us outside of our session with a really interesting question about the Employee Engagement Toolkit. She wanted to understand its applicability outside of food businesses. The three case studies that the toolkit is based on all took place in manufacturing. We have one coming in foodservice, and Ahold is obviously doing this work in grocery retail. Initially, I had answered that the toolkit really was just for food businesses, but the more we talked and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it could be translated to other kinds of businesses, particularly food banks. I had seen another session with the COO of a food bank in Orange County, California, and she said that they basically operate like a food logistics company. So some food banks might not be so different from the distribution center for Ahold or Safeway, for example. They could absolutely benefit from using the toolkit.
Were others talking about food waste reduction at Waste Expo?
Yes. Attendees and speakers of the Organics Recycling Forum and the Food Recovery Forum were really there to bring ideas and solutions forward that would prevent and reduce food waste, or at least better handle food waste if it was generated. On the Organics Recycling side, the question was, “How do we get programs and policies into place so that food doesn’t end up in the landfill?” On the Food Recovery side, the question was, “How do we build solutions so that if food is wasted, it ends up going to people who can eat it or animals who can eat it?”
Are there any future events where some of this material will be covered?
Yes! There is an ongoing effort to further promote and expose the idea of employee engagement and the importance of frontline workers being part of the solution. So first, we have a webinar coming up on June 5 that’s going to be a walkthrough of the Employee Engagement Toolkit. That’s a virtual event and it’s open to anybody, but it will be especially applicable to those working in the food system. Then, at the 2025 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit in Seattle, we’ll be hosting a workshop in the afternoon on Wednesday, June 25, that will be a deeper dive into everything that a business can do to engage their frontline employees in food waste reduction. We’ve heard from food businesses that they need these kinds of programs, so we’ve got those two things coming up next month to hopefully address some of their needs. And I’m sure we’ll do more around this work in the future.
Anything else to add?
I just wanted to thank Waste Expo and Stuart Buckner in particular for giving us the space to speak about this important work!