A Fresh Approach: How Innovative Training Helps Meals on Wheels People Combat Food Waste
Challenge
While Meals on Wheels Portland has long prioritized health equity and community well-being, it has also emerged as a sustainability leader. From composting initiatives and reusable meal container pilots to a shift toward delivering meals via electric vehicles and sourcing renewable energy from its solar panels, the organization is working to minimize its environmental footprint in significant and quantifiable ways. To build on this progress, Meals on Wheels Portland identified food waste education as a critical area of impact—where staff behaviors and daily decisions could significantly support its holistic sustainability mission. For community nutrition providers, food waste reduction is both a sustainability imperative and a service enhancement: every pound of food saved is another opportunity to nourish someone in need.
Solutions Delivered
Meals on Wheels People partnered with TripleWin Advisory to pilot Mitigate, an on-demand training course designed to help food system employees identify waste and implement practical strategies for prevention. A cross-functional group of staff members participated in a four-module training course that covered the following topics:
- An Introduction to Food Loss & Waste
- Food Waste in Foodservice & its Solutions
- Food Waste in Households & Prevention Strategies
- Taking Action at Scale
Mitigate takes a whole-value-chain approach, with each module focused on a different stage in the food system—from farms and manufacturing to service environments and households. The course draws on real-world case studies, expert interviews, and lessons learned through the U.S. Food Waste Pact. Modules offer actionable, context-specific strategies to help employees reduce waste in both professional and personal settings, and to identify opportunities for change at both the individual and organizational levels.
Project Learnings
Meals on Wheels Portland participants praised the course’s clarity, relevance, and applicability to their kitchen and meal service operations. Survey responses showed that 100% of those who completed the course highly recommended that Mitigate be rolled out as core employee training. Several staff members noted that the training reinforced practices they already follow, such as food reuse and minimizing overproduction, while surfacing new ideas for addressing waste more consistently across prep sites.
The course’s interactive format and visual content were seen as strong contributors to engagement. Staff appreciated how the activities and real-world examples kept the material accessible while prompting them to think critically about food waste in their daily work.
Leaders expressed interest in tailoring the course to reflect specific waste streams they encounter, such as undelivered meals and expired bulk ingredients. The “FLW Mitigation Strategies” card sort feature was particularly useful in prompting reflection on these challenges and identifying site-level actions that could be implemented quickly. The course helped participants better understand the difference between food loss and food waste, a common area of confusion, and re-emphasized to learners just how widespread and solvable food waste is.
Client Outcomes
Meals on Wheels People sees clear value in Mitigate as a tool for cultivating and strengthening internal sustainability culture and supporting food waste reduction goals across its operations. Participants expressed interest in integrating the training into existing systems such as required training platforms and operations team meetings and identified natural opportunities for alignment, including onboarding, Green Committee initiatives, and site-level education.
Looking ahead, MOWP is actively exploring how to roll out Mitigate more broadly across its organization. With minimal barriers to participation and immediate relevance to frontline staff, Mitigate offers a clear path to turning awareness into action—while enhancing efficiency, service quality, and community impact.
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.
Meals on Wheels People (MOWP) is a nonprofit organization that prepares and delivers nutritious meals to older adults and people with disabilities across the greater Portland, Oregon area. In addition to its home-delivered meals program, MOWP operates more than a dozen neighborhood dining centers, provides culturally specific meal services, and offers wraparound programming to reduce social isolation among older adults.
Headquarters:Portland, Oregon
Industry:
Nonprofit / Community Nutrition Services
Main Product:
Home-delivered meals and community-based dining programs for older adults and people with disabilities
In their words
I found the Mitigate course engaging and packed with carefully curated resources. I appreciated how the course supported a variety of learning styles with content that was easy to digest. From the diverse modules that offered key takeaways on how to impact food waste streams in both your personal and professional lives, to quizzes and impactful videos, I finished the course feeling empowered and ready to implement many of the recommended strategies.