Understanding Optiwaste
In 2022, an estimated 1.05 billion tons of food went to waste worldwide. Restaurants, canteens, and the broader food service sector accounted for 28% of this total, highlighting a critical area where change is needed.
Large amounts of food are often discarded during preparation or after being served, wasting valuable resources, time, and effort. That’s where Optiwaste comes in, helping users track, reduce, and prevent food waste for a more sustainable future.
Launched by FAO in 2025, Optiwaste is a free, easy to use, and data-driven tool designed to help organizations, food services, and institutions make informed decisions to reduce food waste.
Optiwaste is designed to support global efforts to improve food security, save costs, and reduce the environmental footprint of food waste.
What Optiwaste offers:
- A simple, mobile tool: Optiwaste makes it easy to record and analyze food waste across different service points.
- Free and user-friendly: The app is intuitive, data, driven, and accessible to anyone, schools, restaurants, hotels, and consumers alike.
- Track, analyze, and act: Users can monitor where, when, and why food waste occurs, and use the insights to plan targeted strategies for reduction.
- Turn data into impact: By transforming food waste data into actionable insights, Optiwaste empowers organizations to make measurable changes and reduce waste effectively.
Prevent Food Waste from Desktop and Mobile devices.
Optiwaste is available for any kind of device with an optimised and user-friendly interface to help users track and reduce food waste.
Optiwaste in action
Optiwaste is designed for organizations, food services, restaurants, schools, hospitals, NGOs, and institutions to collect data on food waste.
How to Get Started:
- Download the app and create an account.
- Register your organization, whether it’s a hotel, restaurant, school, ministry, or other facility, and provide relevant information.
- Enter your food data: Record incoming food stock and food waste by food group and service point, after weighing it.
- Calculate waste automatically: Use the app’s build-in option to measure your waste efficiently.
- Visualize and report: Track your food waste and related environmental footprints on your dashboard or export the data to Excel for reporting
Key Features:
- Food waste tracker: Easily record and monitor food waste across your organization.
- Customized insights: Analyze data by facility, food category and service point for targeted actions
- Instant results: See results immediately on your dashboard as soon as the information is completed.
- Excel export: Export your data for further analysis or reporting
Data & Insights
Optiwaste helps organizations monitor food waste and, through analytics by service point and food group, enables targeted actions that effectively reduce waste.
Design for food service providers, businesses, NGOs, and institutions, Optiwaste makes it easier to understand and reduce food waste at every stage of the service chain.
With Optiwaste, you can:
- Pinpoint where, when, and why waste occurs to target problem areas effectively.
- Analyze food waste by service point, food group, and related environmental footprint.
- Export data for dashboards, reports, and deeper analysis.
- Develop solutions to reduce waste, save resources and improve the sustainability of your organization or business.
Data collected through Optiwaste support:
- Strategic planning by users and organizations.
- Continuous learning for staff and food service providers.
Video
Reducing Food Waste and Improving School Meals in the Dominican Republic through Optiwaste
01/12/2025
In the Dominican Republic, approximately 33% of the food intended for school lunches is wasted between preparation and consumption. To this end, FAO...