7 Ways Small Food Businesses can Implement QHSE Strategies for Sustainability

When it comes to adopting QHSE strategies for zero waste and cleaner production, small businesses in the food industry are faced with unique challenges. Implementing the right approach regardless of limited budgets and resources can help small businesses leverage these challenges effectively to integrate quality, health, safety, and environmental standards into their operations. This article provides a short guide on how small businesses in the food industry can implement QHSE practices to strategically adopt sustainability into their processes.

1. Focusing on quick wins
Even though the transition to zero-waste can be a daunting task, small businesses make impactful progress in their food operations by focusing on small changes that yield quick results that can motivate them to achieve bigger and broader challenges.

These small practical steps could be simply tracking and measuring food and resource waste daily. This could be implemented in key company areas like production processes, packaging, storage, and sourcing. When these areas of food waste are defined, opportunities for repurposing these wastes can be identified. One example of repurposing waste, especially in the aspect of organic waste, is seeking collaboration with local farmers or composting facilities to turn organic waste into valuable resources like biofertilizers.

Industry Examples: Frea, Berlin is a zero-waste vegan restaurant that turns leftover food into compost within 24 hours using their composting machine. Seven Market Cafe in Seattle is a cafe that produces so little waste that all the trash generated in a week can fit into a single mason jar. Graffiti Earth, also in New York, focuses on sustainability by repurposing food waste and minimizing its environmental footprint.

2. Leverage Low-Cost Technology for Waste Monitoring
Small food businesses may not have the privilege to use advanced QHSE technologies like IoT sensors or AI analytics for tracking waste. However, they can take advantage of other cost-effective options that allow them to monitor resource input and waste output while using expensive systems.

Affordable software that tracks inventory and waste can be implemented to monitor things like overproduction, food expiration dates, and waste at different stages of production. These basic IoT-enabled devices can go further to monitor water and energy consumption, which helps businesses identify areas where waste can be reduced.

Industry Examples: Leanpath is a company that provides affordable food waste tracking software that helps businesses monitor and reduce food waste. Too Good to Go is an app that connects restaurants and stores that have surplus unsold food, which helps businesses reduce food waste and allows consumers to buy food at a discounted price. Data retrieved from these services can be integrated into these businesses' QHSE framework to meet sustainability targets more effectively. 

3. Collaborate for Resource Recovery: Local Networks and Partnerships
Collaboration and partnership are two of the most effective ways small businesses can adopt QHSE strategies. Small businesses lacking the huge resources needed to implement large-scale resource recovery systems like anaerobic digestion, for example, can partner with local businesses and waste management services to help reduce the burden of managing their waste sustainably.

In a practical sense, food businesses can associate with local food recovery networks or partner with food banks to ensure that excess food products are redistributed to areas where they can be valuable instead of being discarded as waste. Moreover, food businesses can partner with local farms or cooperatives that handle organic waste, where it can be used for compost or converted into biogas.

Industry Examples: Feedback Global in the UK collaborates with local food businesses, farmers, and volunteers to organize events like “Feeding the 5000,” where surplus food is used to prepare meals for the community. Imperfect Foods partners with food producers and farmers to rescue “imperfect” or surplus products that would have otherwise gone to waste and sell them at discounted prices to help reduce food waste while supporting local agriculture. By diverting food from landfills, these businesses reduce waste and improve their community impact—aligning with both QHSE environmental and social responsibility goals.

4. Affordable Quality and Safety Integration: HACCP and Lean Practices
Acquiring a comprehensive certification in both ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 standards can be very expensive for small businesses. This shouldn't, however, stop them from implementing other QHSE best practices that are not only affordable but also ensure waste reduction, product quality, and food safety. QHSE practices like the HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) and Lean manufacturing principles can be taken advantage of by small businesses in the food industry to implement sustainable solutions in their daily operations.

By training employees in HACCP protocols, small food businesses place their operations in a position to identify critical control points where food safety and waste can be optimized to ensure a reduction in product recalls and spoilage while maintaining product quality. Similarly, Lean practice adoption can help optimize inventory management and production schedules to monitor material and resource flow to help reduce overproduction and resource waste.

Industry Examples: Instock, a restaurant chain implements HACCP protocols to ensure food safety and quality while repurposing ingredients that would otherwise go to waste from local suppliers. Kromkommer takes imperfect vegetables that don't meet appearance standards to make soup, ensuring food quality and safety through HACCP practice.

5. Embrace Sustainable Packaging with Scalable Solutions
Packaging plays a major role in how businesses and industries achieve sustainability. For small businesses, the transition to sustainable packaging can be a big challenge to address considering that they may not have the huge resources like the large companies to invest in compostable or biodegradable packaging. Again, the adoption of cost-effective alternatives that align with their business scale and resources can be opted for.

For smaller companies, transitioning to sustainable packaging is a crucial step in achieving zero waste. While larger companies may invest in biodegradable or compostable packaging, smaller businesses can opt for cost-effective alternatives that align with their scale and resources. For example, by focusing on recyclable materials that are easy for customers to handle and dispose of responsibly, small businesses can adopt minimalist packaging to reduce material use.

Industry Examples: Sulapac, a Helsinki-based startup, makes fully biodegradable material from sustainably sourced wood and plant binders, which are designed to degrade without leaving traces of microplastics. A UK-based company, Notpla, produced Oohi, a sustainable packaging solution made from seaweed and plants that offer a unique and eco-friendly alternative to traditional plastic packaging.

6. Seek External Certifications for Brand Credibility
As stated earlier, QHSE certifications are acquired at a very high cost that may be difficult for small businesses to afford. It is important for small businesses seeking to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability to boost their brand by getting certifications that are more focused and accessible to help them attract eco-conscious consumers. Small businesses should aim at smaller, specific certifications like B Corp, Fair Trade, USDA Organic, or any certification that aligns with the business’ sustainability goals.

While implementing full QHSE certifications can be costly, small companies can start with certifications that are more focused and accessible, such as B Corp, Fair Trade, or USDA Organic certifications. These certifications demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and can boost brand reputation, often helping attract eco-conscious consumers. This can also be used to differentiate the company's brand in a competitive market.

Industry Examples: Tony's Chocolonely in Amsterdam highlights its dedication to social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability with a B Corp certification to show its commitment to 100% slave-free chocolate and uses Fair Trade-certified cocoa. Pukka Herbs in the UK enhances its focus on sustainability and ethical sourcing through its Fair Trade and B Corp certifications to ensure that its products are good for consumers and for the environment.

7. Invest in Employee Training and a Culture of Sustainability
Perhaps the most important step towards sustainability for most businesses is to invest in their employees. This is because a company's sustainability efforts are only as strong as the team that implements them. Imbibing the culture of sustainability for small businesses is essential to achieving net-zero waste and cleaner production, where every employee plays a crucial role in meeting its QHSE goals.

Small businesses in the food industry can invest in employee training programs that focus on process improvement, food safety, waste reduction, and energy conservation. More still, a reward system can be applied to motivate employees who make suggestions or contribute to innovative solutions and process improvement in safety, quality, and waste management.

Industry Examples: To foster a culture of sustainability, Too Good To Go not only invests heavily in its employees in acquiring knowledge of sustainable practices, but it also encourages its employees to come up with innovative ideas to achieve their sustainability goals. Recover promotes a sustainability culture by involving employees in decision-making related to its environmental goals by investing continuously in training employees in sustainable production processes, waste management, and energy conservation.

Scaling QHSE for Small Businesses

Smaller food businesses can achieve significant progress toward zero waste and cleaner production by adopting QHSE principles in a manageable and scalable way. The key is to focus on small, strategic changes, collaborate with local partners, and make use of affordable technologies that align with the company’s goals and resources. 

By prioritizing waste reduction, resource recovery, and sustainability, even the smallest companies can thrive in a competitive, environmentally conscious market—while enhancing their brand, cutting costs, and ensuring compliance with key QHSE regulations. 

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#HACCP #Composting #Collaboration #WasteMonitoring #EnergyConservation #BrandCredibility