Do Good Foods makes chicken feed from supermarket surplus foods to keep food from ending up in landfills emitting methane.

The University of Notre Dame installed three Grind2Energy systems, which aims to reduce the amount of food waste from the campus’ dining halls. The systems process the waste and send it to a local dairy farm where they break down the material to produce biogas that is used to generate electrical power for 1,000 homes each day in Plymouth, Indiana. While not everyone at the university has committed to the sustainability efforts, these systems can be scaled to be used on other college campuses.

Monitoring spikes in ethylene allows produce distributors to reduce food waste. The Philadelphia based company, Strella Biotech, uses sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) to track when produce begins to emit ethylene and ripen. By paying closer attention to the status of their produce, distributors partnering with Stella Biotech have reduced food waste and saved money in the process.

South Korea’s mandatory composting policy and curbside composting program help the country recycle almost 100% of its food waste. Residents put their food waste into designated bags, squeeze out the liquid, and leave it in a bin by the street to be delivered to a processing plant where it is turned into biogas, animal feed, or fertilizer.

The volunteer initiative Foodsharing is helping reduce food waste in Germany by collecting donated goods from restaurants, grocery stores, and other food businesses and distributing them to anyone interested. The food is given away through communication channels like WhatsApp groups or publicly accessible places like community fridges, and you do not need to meet any qualifications to get it.

Food waste diverted from the landfill to anaerobic digesters can be used to create electricity. In Massachusetts, farmers and businesses participate in a waste-to-energy project in partnership with Vanguard Renewables. Discarded food waste is mixed with cow manure and fed into a digester. The gasses created are then used to power electric generators.

Les Alchimistes is a social enterprise outside of Paris that turns the 900,000 tons of food waste produced every year into compost that is then sold to farmers. The group is supported by industrial composters named Tidy Planet who have managed to speed up the natural composting process from 6-12 months to less than two weeks. The Alchimistes have six composting sites across France, and they rely on city cyclists to pick up the food waste from each participating restaurant.