To integrate sustainability into food production systems and quantify if improvements are being made, we must be able to account for and measure changes.

In the past several years, there have been numerous Canadian government initiatives to address plastic waste. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) put forward a Canada-wide Strategy and Action Plan on Zero Plastic Waste in 2018 and 2019 that takes a circular economy approach to plastics. This plan was adopted by federal, provincial, and territorial governments. Keeping all plastics in the economy and out of the environment will involve activities such as prevention, collection, clean-up, and value recovery.

At Conestoga College’s School of Hospitality & Culinary Arts, a team of researchers, faculty, and students is transforming the student-run Bloom restaurant into a climate-action living lab.

The Living Lab team published an article about their efforts to reduce food loss and waste at Conestoga's student-run Bloom Restaurant.

Conestoga College’s Food Research and Innovation Lab has been prototyping an innovative new training strategy using extended reality (XR) simulations for employees in Ontario provincially registered meat processing facilities.