Tools for Action: Building the U.S. Food Waste Pact’s Employee Engagement Toolkit
Challenge
The U.S. Food Waste Pact is a national voluntary agreement that helps food businesses accelerate progress toward food waste reduction. Signatories range across sectors and rely on shared tools, data, and collaboration to meet their reduction goals. Backed by WWF and ReFED, the Pact identified a critical need through their member working groups: an accessible, flexible resource that could help food businesses engage frontline employees in reducing food waste across daily operations.
To support this effort, WWF commissioned TripleWin Advisory to design a practical, scalable toolkit that could equip organizations across the food value chain to engage employees meaningfully. At the heart of this open-source resource is a collection of sector-specific training videos—designed to function both as standalone learning tools and as a launch point for deeper employee engagement.
Food businesses often struggle to translate sustainability goals into day-to-day behaviors on the floor. Most frontline employees lack exposure to food waste education, and many companies don’t have dedicated resources to run employee engagement campaigns. Pact signatories needed a simple, low-barrier way to build awareness—and a structured set of materials that companies could deploy internally where most needed.
TripleWin was engaged to design a toolkit that would meet these needs: clear, actionable, and adaptable across multiple food sectors. Drawing on our project experience and ongoing sector-specific research, TripleWin built the toolkit to reflect proven strategies that work across environments—from manufacturing lines to hotel kitchens.
Solutions Delivered
TripleWin developed an Employee Engagement Toolkit with the following components:
- A business case pitch deck and recorded webinar to help sustainability leaders secure leadership buy-in within their organizations.
- A full set of implementation SOPs and measurement templates.
- A customizable, white-label employee competition themed around solving a “food waste mystery,” with editable banners, posters, submission slips, and incentive materials.
- GEMBA walk resources that empower teams to observe operations and identify reduction opportunities on the floor.
- A simplified Opportunity Register that helps companies organize and prioritize employee-generated food waste reduction ideas.
- A guide for piloting high-potential ideas to validate their ROI ahead of full-fledged implementation.
One of the most valuable and versatile components of the toolkit is its set of sector-specific training videos, available in English and Spanish. These short videos are tailored to five different food industry settings—manufacturing and distribution, grocery retail, foodservice, quick service (fast food) restaurants, and hospitality—and provide concise, actionable food waste mitigation strategies for employees at every level.
The videos serve two distinct purposes:
- As standalone educational tools, they help companies raise awareness even if they’re not running a full employee engagement challenge.
- When used alongside other toolkit components, they provide a shared foundation for deeper engagement efforts—ensuring that all participants understand why food waste matters and what they can do to reduce it.
Project Learnings
Feedback from sector interviews and past pilot projects made it clear that flexibility and accessibility were key to this toolkit adoption. Many organizations wanted tools they could deploy in-house, without hiring outside consultants. Others needed resources that could work across shifts, languages, and facility types.
The training videos were especially valuable in meeting these needs. Their bilingual, sector-specific design made them easy to roll out across a wide range of workplaces, while their short runtime and practical messaging made them highly effective educational tools.
Client Outcomes
The toolkit is now a flagship resource of the U.S. Food Waste Pact (USFWP), freely available to all signatories and the broader, global food business community. It provides a practical, tested pathway for companies to involve their employees in reducing food waste—whether through competition, observation, idea testing, or simple awareness-building.
By making it easy for businesses to start with what works, the toolkit supports a culture of sustainability that can be scaled across departments and locations. It empowers employees to move from passive participation to active problem-solving, helping companies turn waste reduction from an abstract goal into a shared daily practice.
Experts
TripleWin Advisory is a boutique corporate consultancy focused on circularity solutions for industry. TripleWin offers a suite of tools to support clients in charting a practical, circular and sustainable course for their business. These tools include:
- Carbon inventories and setting science-based and Net Zero carbon goals
- Materiality assessments and sustainability roadmaps
- Building circular business models supported by financial analysis
- Risk scenario models using the TCFD framework
- Workshops and courses to build employee agency and corporate competency
We work with leaders in the following industries: apparel, footwear & textiles; information technology; metals; beauty; food & beverage; healthcare; building construction; human resource management; and retail.
TripleWin Advisory is an approved CDP climate change consultancy Accredited Service Provider (ASP). We are woman-founded, owned and led; a public benefit company.
The U.S. Food Waste Pact is a national voluntary agreement that brings together food businesses to take measurable action on food loss and waste. Led by WWF and ReFED, the Pact supports signatories through shared tools, data, and collaborative initiatives aligned with the “Target, Measure, Act” framework. It builds on the success of the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment and aims to accelerate progress toward national and global food waste reduction goals.
Headquarters:USA
Industry:
NGO
Main Product:
Food Waste Reduction Tools and Resources
In their words
"The quality and efficiency of TripleWin's work were top-notch, and we appreciated how well they tailored their approach to fit the specific needs of our facility. Their dedication to understanding our goals and delivering measurable results truly made TripleWin a valuable partner in this project."