A food waste baseline measurement (in Dutch, a nulmeting) shows how much of what you buy ends up in the bin, after which meal and on which ward. Without that starting point you can't set a target, and later you can't show progress. This plan helps you set up a baseline that means something, and that you can repeat in exactly the same way a year from now.
Why a food waste baseline measurement is more than a formality
If you work with the Milieuthermometer Zorg, the Dutch environmental certification for care organisations, a baseline is a requirement. The MTZ certification scheme, version 7, valid from 1 January 2025 to 1 January 2028, asks in requirement 7.1 for a sustainable food and catering plan containing "a baseline and at least concrete, measurable objectives". Reducing food waste is one of those objectives. This applies at every level.
For silver and gold, requirement 7.3 is added. It asks you to measure and record kitchen waste, plate waste and banqueting at least once a year. Within two years of certification, waste may be at most 20% of purchased weight. For gold, prepared meals may additionally be at most 15%. The requirement applies to central catering: a central kitchen cooking for more than 30 clients, or centrally purchased convenience meals.
The Green Deal Duurzame Zorg, the Dutch care sector's sustainability agreement (version 3.0, succeeded from 1 November 2026 by the 2027-2030 deal "Samen verder"), also asks care providers to map their "existing food waste in care". Both versions contain that commitment.
There is one more reason: no current national figures exist. In 2023 the Dutch minister wrote: "There are no figures on the amount of food waste in care centres" (parliamentary questions 2022-2023, no. 1345). Your own baseline is the only number that is really about your organisation.
Step 1: decide why you measure and who owns it
In 2016, researchers at Wageningen University & Research described a standard approach to measuring food waste in hospitals (WUR, report 1637). Their first step is to pin down the reason for measuring, because that decides who feels ownership. The initiative often comes from facilities or sustainability, while nurses do the measuring.
Agree on this up front. Who is responsible for the baseline, who measures on the ward, and who collects the data at the end of the day? When a board member names the goal out loud, teams find it easier to make time for it.
Step 2: choose which streams you measure
For the hot meal, WUR distinguishes three sources of waste:
- what is left over after portioning or production
- plate waste from the patient or resident
- returned meals that come back untouched
The Milieuthermometer works with kitchen waste, plate waste and banqueting. Write down how your streams map onto those three categories. What stays behind in serving dishes and pans tells you something different from what is left on the plate. The first points to cooking or serving too much, the second to taste, portion size or appetite.
Decide how fine-grained you want to be. Per ward or only per site? Per food group or only in total? The more detail, the more targeted your changes can be later. WUR advises exploring all meal types for two days first, so you can see where the biggest gains are. For the Milieuthermometer, include all three categories in any case.
Step 3: record purchasing and numbers
A kilo of waste says little on its own. WUR gives the example of an institution that wastes 200 kg a day: a problem with 100 residents, but not with 10,000 patients. So you need a denominator, and the Milieuthermometer uses purchased weight.
How to calculate the percentage:
- Add up the weight of everything you throw away, per meal or period.
- Add up the purchased weight for the same meals, for example from the delivery notes.
- Divide the first by the second and multiply by 100.
Say a ward sends back 180 kg in two weeks, and 1,000 kg was purchased for those meals. Then waste is 18% of purchasing. Also record how many people ate at each meal. That lets you work in grams per person, which makes wards of different sizes comparable.
One warning from WUR: the weights in the menu system often differ from what the kitchen actually produces. Cooks sometimes make a little extra on purpose so they don't run short. Where you can, use real purchasing or production data.
Step 4: measure for at least two ordinary weeks
Milieuplatform Zorgsector (MPZ), the organisation behind the Milieuthermometer, advises in its food and catering dossier: "Measure for at least two weeks how much food is thrown away at different points in the process." WUR proposes 14 consecutive days. That way you measure every weekday twice, outliers weigh less, and you include the weekend, which has a rhythm of its own.
Pick an ordinary period, away from public and school holidays. Keep the menu cycle in mind too. If an unusual menu falls in your measurement weeks, make a note of it.
Step 5: set up the measurement and brief the team
How you measure depends on your method: scales and forms, a camera above the bin, or a photo of every plate, dish or pan. We compare the three in Measuring food waste: scales, bin camera or a photo per plate?
Whichever method you choose, these agreements help:
- Give instructions on the first day and measure that day together with someone who knows the method. When the shift changes, brief again.
- Have one person check every day that everything has been filled in and whether any meals are missing.
- Write down exactly how you measure. The second measurement has to follow the same method, or you won't be comparing like with like.
WUR also names two effects that can colour the outcome. Kitchen staff who weigh their own waste have an interest in it looking good, or as the Dutch saying goes, the butcher inspecting his own meat. And during the measurement weeks, teams often cook and serve more carefully without realising it: the Hawthorne effect. Where possible, have people from another department do the measuring, and check whether the figures drift over the two weeks.
Four pitfalls in a baseline measurement
- Only measuring plates. What stays in serving dishes and pans, and what comes back untouched, then drops out of view.
- Not recording purchasing. Without a denominator you have kilos, but no percentage to hold against the Milieuthermometer.
- Gaps in the data. If breakfast wasn't measured on two wards, comparing wards isn't fair.
- The wrong message. In 2023 a Dutch care centre announced it would weigh residents' food to save money. The minister disapproved of the way the cost saving had been put first, and pointed to "serving smaller portions and offering more if someone is still hungry" (parliamentary questions 2022-2023, no. 1345). Tell your team the baseline is about the right amount and the right dish, not about eating less. Read more in Plate waste is a care signal: food waste and malnutrition.
After the baseline: analyse, adjust, measure again
The baseline starts a cycle. WUR describes it as: identify, measure, analyse, adjust, and then a second measurement done the same way.
In the analysis you look for the hotspots. They can sit in a process (portioning), a ward, a food group (vegetables) or a day. WUR mentions Friday, when patients are sent home at short notice. Measures range from small, like a measuring scoop for portioning, to large, like a new meal concept. What to do next is covered in Reducing food waste in care: what do you do with the figures?
A Belgian hospital shows how this plays out. In October 2024, Sint-Maria hospital in Halle measured all food waste in the kitchen, from patients and in the cafeteria for two weeks. A year later it measured again in the same period: 23% less waste. In between, it asked patients in advance whether they wanted one portion or more, revised the menu and cancelled meals in time when patients were discharged (VRT NWS, 2026). More examples are in Food waste in hospitals: what works in practice.
Record the results and measures in your sustainable food and catering plan. The Milieuthermometer requires you to evaluate the action plan every year and adjust it where needed. How to approach this for requirement 7.3 is in Milieuthermometer Zorg: how to measure food waste for requirement 7.3. For the bigger picture of where waste arises in care, see our guide Food waste in healthcare: what it costs and how to measure it.
How Waste Warrior Monitor helps with your baseline
A baseline with scales and forms is a lot of manual work, which is why it often stops after that one measurement. With Waste Warrior Monitor, staff photograph what comes back after the meal: every plate with leftovers, and the serving dishes and pans. Empty plates don't need a photo. The AI estimates the grams in each photo and which ingredients they are, and staff can correct every ingredient. Drinks or other leftovers you enter yourself in grams, so everything you throw away counts.
For each measurement you choose the ward, the meal and the number of people. You link purchasing by scanning a delivery note, entering dishes yourself, or through bulk purchase import (CSV import), for example from your supplier's export. The dashboard then shows waste as a percentage of purchasing, per meal and per ward, with the Milieuthermometer levels as an indicator. "Wat ontbreekt" (what's missing) shows which meals on which wards haven't been measured yet, so your baseline is complete. After two weeks you see the weekly trend, and automatic report generation (PDF report) records the outcome for your plan.
Want to see how that works for your organisation? Book a demo and we'll walk through it together.
