ReFED – Sophia Busam – 2025
Summary
Sophia developed the foundation for a Maturity Assessment Toolkit to support food businesses in evaluating food loss and waste strategies.
Goals
The United States Food Waste Pact (the Pact), led by ReFED and WWF, is a national voluntary agreement to help food businesses accelerate progress toward their waste reduction targets. Sophia Busam joined ReFED as a Fellow to support the Pact by creating a framework for food businesses to evaluate the maturity and progress of their food loss and waste (FLW) strategies.
Solutions
Sophia designed a Maturity Assessment Toolkit for both retail and foodservice sectors to self-evaluate food waste strategies across multiple dimensions, including measurement and data infrastructure, organizational commitment, etc. Sophia worked directly with ReFED’s Business Initiatives team; received feedback from Pact signatories, industry experts, and internal ReFED teams; and utilized data from the ReFED Insights Engine to ensure the framework was clear, actionable, and flexible to support companies across sectors with differing levels of maturity. The sector-specific toolkits include short and long self-assessment questionnaires to evaluate current practices, a maturity model to understand where those practices fit within industry best practice, and a solution prioritization matrix and database to support companies in their exploration of FLW strategies.
Potential Impact
The Maturity Assessment Toolkit establishes a framework for food businesses to assess their FLW strategies and to understand their position within the larger sector landscape. Once live, the Toolkit will provide United States Food Waste Pact signatories, and food businesses more broadly, with the tools to self-assess their practices, identify strengths and gaps, and visualize the full spectrum of available FLW solutions coupled with associated impacts and investments. By helping companies prioritize and act on sector-specific solutions, the Toolkit’if broadly adopted’will accelerate data-driven FLW solutions adoption.
