Google cut cafeteria food waste with bowls an inch less deep

Before the pandemic forced its employees home, Google tested a simple intervention in one of its cafes: bowls set out an inch less deep. 'That unconsciously led to people taking a little less food — 30 to 50% less — and that actually downstream led to 30-70% less waste,' Emily Ma, head of Google's Food for Good program, told Fast Company in March 2022.

The bowl tweak sits inside a broader nudge kit: signs reminding employees to take only what they need — and that they can always come back for more — smaller scoops, and plated meals where cafe staff control portions but that isn't viable everywhere. Behind the line, kitchens track everything thrown out to adjust ordering and prep, and chefs train on knife skills that waste less; component cooking keeps chicken separate from curry and herbs so leftovers can be remade into something new tomorrow.

The program stretches across the supply chain: recipes use ingredients that would normally be trashed (slaw from peeled broccoli stems), chefs source upcycled inputs like flour made from coffee cherries, and in India pilots return scraps to farmers for compost while inedible scraps feed black soldier flies that become chicken feed for eggs Google buys back. Food waste is responsible for around 8% of the world's carbon footprint, the company notes.

The nudge costs nothing and meets no resistance — diners never notice the bowl, so there is nothing to push back on.

It intervenes where portion size is actually decided: at the serving vessel, not at the plate scrape.

The numbers are self-reported by Google, but they are specific and consistent with portion-size research.

The cheapest lever on behavior is the geometry of the default. Change the container, not the person — it scales from one cafe to a global program because there is nothing to comply with.

As offices reopened in April 2022, Google planned to ramp the efforts back up for a wave of new employees who had never been on site; Ma says 20 different workstreams are being piloted or scaled across regions as part of the 2025 zero-landfill goal.