IMPSF105 – Promote waste minimisation in a food environment

Overview 

This standard covers the skills and knowledge needed to promote waste minimisation in food manufacture and its supply chain. It includes the development of working systems that avoid and reduce the production of waste in support of sustainability. It also includes managing the systems used to control waste and its disposal.

This standard applies to you if you are a manager or technologist who has responsibility for waste in a food environment. It is expected that you will work as part of a team to develop and implement the systems.

Performance criteria

You must be able to:

1. identify legal requirements that control the management of waste
2. specify waste reduction, reuse and recycling targets to comply with legal requirements
3. establish current levels of waste for activities undertaken by the organisation
4. assess effectiveness of waste management systems
5. identify opportunities for avoiding and reducing waste through design, reuse and recycling
6. identify potential barriers that may limit waste avoidance and reduction
7. specify waste monitoring procedures
8. confirm measures for managing waste meet legal requirements
9. advise on design of processes and products to help avoid and minimise potential waste
10. promote and support implementation of waste avoidance and reduction measures for all organisational activities
11. promote application of waste avoidance, recycling and reuse in support of organisational activities
12. define and allocate roles and responsibilities to support waste minimisation
13. identify training needs and organise training to those responsible for reducing waste
14. develop and implement strategy to overcome barriers that limit the impact of waste reduction measures
15. establish methods to evaluate impact of waste reduction measures
16. support implementation of monitoring and control procedures
17. evaluate the impact of measures to reduce waste
18. specify benefits achieved through waste reduction measures

Knowledge and understanding

You need to know and understand

1. legislation that controls an organisation's waste policies and procedures
2. different types of waste and where and how they can legally be disposed of
3. waste management hierarchies
4. government targets and standards for waste reduction, reuse and recycling
5. how production of waste impacts on environmental issues such as climate change
6. the impact of waste on sustainability
7. how waste avoidance and minimisation supports sustainability
8. benefits of waste minimisation to the organisation
9. how waste minimisation can help reduce carbon emissions
10. how and where waste is generated as a result of organisational activities
11. how to establish current levels of waste for different types of waste generated by the organisation across all organisational activities
12. how to assess effectiveness of waste management systems
13. principles of waste benchmarking as a method of identifying opportunities for reducing waste
14. factors that limit organisational recycling and reuse
15. how process and product design can help avoid and minimise the generation of waste
16. opportunities available for reducing waste
17. how to develop targets for waste, reuse and recycling
18. barriers that can limit the impact of measures to minimise waste and how barriers can be overcome
19. how effective process control and quality assurance can support waste minimisation
20. how to complete an organisational cost/benefit analysis in respect to waste
21. methods of promoting waste avoidance and minimisation
22. how to monitor, control and maintain waste minimisation
23. how to define and allocate roles and responsibilities for all those involved in reducing waste across all the activities undertaken by the organisation
24. how to identify training needs and organise staff training to support waste minimisation
25. how to evaluate the impact of measures to reduce waste
26. principles of continuous improvement
27. how to act as a role model for promoting waste minimisation

Keywords: Food; manufacture; sustainable; environmental; production; waste; energy; water; transport; efficiency; drink