Dishcraft Helps Foodservice Operators Reduce Waste and Emissions

Dishcraft, a robotics company focused on solving labor and sustainability challenges facing foodservice operators, today released data on the company’s sustainability efforts. 

Based on data collected on three separate customers using Dishcraft’s reusable container service, the company had the following impact on reduction of waste and emissions:

• Two corporate campus customers, each using Dishcraft for approximately nine months, have averted more than three tons of landfill waste. The customers also realized significant emission savings, totaling more than 90,000 lbs of CO2, or the annual equivalent of removing nine cars from the road or the carbon sequestered by 51 acres of forest in a year. 

• Savings have grown as more employees return to work: one customer's service and commensurate savings have nearly doubled, while the other's has grown by approximately 50%. Their campuses still have a fraction of employees working on site and eating meals served by their corporate cafeterias.

• A restaurant customer, whose savings reflect their smaller volume, also achieved robust savings. In only two months, they've saved more than 150 lbs of waste and more than 1,150 lbs of CO2 emissions. If they maintain this volume throughout the year, they'll offset the CO2 emissions equivalent to the carbon sequestered by about four acres of forest for a year. 

“The numbers prove what we’ve known all along--that Dishcraft is a valuable service to any corporate, hotel and hospital cafeteria, as well as restaurants looking to reduce disposable foodware and water waste,” said Linda Pouliot, CEO and co-founder of Dishcraft. “As we expand our offerings beyond the Bay Area, we’re confident that we can continue to positively impact this industry and make a bigger impact on waste and emissions reductions.” 

Dishcraft launched with the intention of improving efficiency in the dishwashing process, a task that kitchens across the country struggle to achieve. In designing a robotic solution, the company realized it could also have a measurable, and ultimately important, impact on the environment in its optimized use of resources including water and energy. 

Sustainability is built into the design of Dischcraft’s technology. Robots can repeat tasks with measurable input and output, requiring the use of the same small amount of water to wash each dishware item going through the machine, whereas a human uses a variable amount depending on the dish, leftover food and other wasteful variables. 

Dishcraft’s technology is modular, with each hub sized to meet the needs of local customers. Hubs range in size, with most facilities processing a minimum of 25,000 wares per day.  . The company’s proprietary design saves as much as 75% of the water used in a typical dishroom and uses energy at a remarkable 1/10 the level of a standard dishroom.

Dishcraft’s “dishware as a service” offering is replacing one-time use plates and containers with reusable, clean and sanitized dishware, including reusable containers. A recent UPSTREAM report found that food service uses close to one trillion disposable foodware items each year, leading to nine million tons of waste. According to David Biderman of the Solid Waste Foundation of North America, residential trash increased about 25% during the COVID pandemic. Reusable dishware is a plausible, and now proven, solution to this alarming environmental problem.

Currently, Dishcraft serves the San Francisco Bay Area, with plans to expand to several new cities in 2022, increasing their environmental impact beyond a local footprint. The company expects its impact on waste reduction to increase accordingly, and will continue to refine its technology to decrease energy use and overall waste creation. 

For more information on Dishcraft and its technology, please visit www.dishcraft.com.