Imagine a meal from your favorite restaurant. Now imagine one-third of it sitting in a truck, heading to a waste facility. This is the reality for most eating establishments. A large quantity of a restaurant’s most ordered food is prepared at the beginning of the day, and the portions that are not sold are wasted.
Thankfully, the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW) is taking a proactive approach to this problem at its six all-you-care-to-eat Dining Markets, each of which supports thousands of hungry students. All-you-care-to-eat Dining Markets at the UW have seen a rapid reduction in kitchen food waste thanks to cutting-edge technology known as Leanpath. With the joint efforts from students, University Housing Dining and Culinary Services (Dining) staff, and the Green Fund, the university is turning over a new leaf.
Students Take Action
In 2022, Morgan Barlin and a team of fellow students noticed food waste while eating at the Dining Markets and were inspired to make a difference. Barlin describes her first-hand experience with food waste at the university as, “being involved in the Food Recovery Network (FRN) on campus, I knew the University was open to creative food waste solutions. While FRN recovered excess food and prevented it from going to waste, food recovery didn’t solve the root of the problem. Our dining halls were producing much more food than we needed. Given that the Green Fund supports capital investments, I, along with Travis Blomberg who mentored me along the way, started doing research on food waste reduction technology and found Leanpath.”
Barlin applied for a grant through the Green Fund, an Office of Sustainability program designed to support student initiatives that improve the campus’s environmental, social, and economic impact. The Green Fund and its staff are involved from the moment a student realizes they want to make a change and help them develop ways to reach their goals. Together, Dining and Green Fund staff and students were able to rethink the systems that Dining uses to reduce back-of-house food waste. This waste includes food that is thrown away during the stages of preparation, storage, and cooking. The team settled on the Leanpath system.
The Green Fund approved a pilot program in February 2022 to incorporate Leanpath into Rheta’s Market, and the project hit the ground running that summer. Dining staff utilize Leanpath to gather data before disposing of each food item. The Leanpath technology tracks the type of food, the food weight, and the reason the food is being discarded.
The Leanpath system then analyzes this data to produce helpful statistics and assign financial cost and environmental factors to food scraps. These results are easy to read and are automatically shown visually in graphs and charts. For example, the food waste value is totaled daily and compared to previous days. This way, all members of the team can see the shrinking amount of food waste being produced. Through this process, Dining staff can critically evaluate foods that are commonly wasted and are encouraged to make more strategic purchasing decisions.
The pilot project in Rheta’s Market was so successful that it led to a secondary location for Leanpath installation, Four Lakes Market in Dejope Residence Hall. Malorie Garbe, the University Housing Sustainability Coordinator, facilitated the expansion of Leanpath to Four Lakes Market in 2023 and eventually to all six Dining Market locations across the UW campus in November 2024. This exciting development represents a major commitment from Dining to support sustainability efforts, consistent with Dining’s goal to reduce back-of-house food waste by 50% over the next few years.
Measuring Success
Three undergraduate students interning with the UW Office of Sustainability, Gabby Lambert, Mayra Macias, and Caidy Hesting, worked to calculate the amount of food waste in both Rheta’s and Four Lakes Markets and assess the environmental impacts of that waste. During the Leanpath system’s first months of implementation at Rheta’s Market, the interns determined that 97% of pasta waste was reduced, impressing both the Dining staff and the Green Fund team. Additionally, because less food is ordered in response to these results, less money is spent. Minimizing food waste not only cuts down on Dining costs but also helps with the environmental impacts of food waste and the possible implications that come along with it. The results of the trial at Rheta’s provided the rationale to expand the Leanpath program to all six Dining Markets on the UW campus. As a result, campus-wide savings between March 17 and April 28, 2025 indicated a cumulative reduction of 11.4 tons of food waste worth an equivalent of 8,125 gallons of gasoline and 72 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
Not only was the system being used correctly and efficiently, but the staff welcomed the new equipment with excitement and interest. In a survey conducted by Green Fund students and staff, Dining staff reported that operating Leanpath did not interfere with their daily tasks, and they were glad to be involved with sustainability efforts, which improved the operations of their kitchens. Results found that 83% of respondents described working with the Leanpath system positively, and 80% of respondents believed that the system should be implemented in other Dining Markets.
A large factor in the success of the implementation of this project was the willingness of the Dining staff to learn and improve upon their processes and procedures. Dining has partnered with the Green Fund on many projects over the years: from solar panels to hydroponic vegetable gardens to energy-efficient kitchen hood controls and everything in between. The Green Fund looks forward to future collaborations that advance the sustainability of campus with the help of students, staff, and faculty to support the UW’s recently released sustainability goals. Dining continues to support sustainability efforts, and with positions like the University Housing Sustainability Coordinator, the university has made significant progress and hopes to maintain this momentum.
Written by: Mayra Macias, Caidy Hesting, Gabby Lambert