For food businesses · The cost of the bin

The Cost of the Bin.

See what running out of time really costs your business — and what flips to recovery. Change any number below. Everything updates live.

First — which are you?

What the bin really costs

Type what you throw out on an average day. See what it actually costs — and what flips to recovery.

Good food you throw out per day

Still fine, just out of time (at what you paid for it).

$0$300

Type

Everything below reflects the number in the box above

What you throw out costs you

$12,168

a year in good food you bought, prepped, and threw out — that's $1,014/month returning nothing on what you paid

≈ 691 hours of Ontario minimum-wage payroll, made and discarded

How it's counted: ingredient cost × 1.30 for the prep labour and energy already spent. A conservative load, sourced below.

The climate cost of throwing it out

4,306 kg

CO₂e a year — roughly like driving 22,661 km

$30 ÷ $5.0/kg = 6.0 kg/day → × 312 days = 1,872 kg/year → × 2.3 = 4,306 kg CO₂e

Estimated, not measured: based on Second Harvest's national average for wasted edible food (~2.3 kg CO₂e per kg). An illustration from public data applied to your volume — not a Trophex reading. Change the cost-per-kg above and this moves.

out of time → one destination: the bintrophex → one more, in time

What flips to recovery with Trophex

$4,680

a year in same-day sales that used to be zero — $390/month, ≈ 266 hours of payroll funded by surplus you were binning

Conservative: assumes about half your good surplus sells same-day, recovering roughly its ingredient cost. Some good food still misses the window, and truly spoiled food still goes out as waste. Posting is built to take under 10 seconds.

Impact · same food, a different ending

If it's not sold, it's not lost — it's still recovery

1,123

meals for families a year

routed to a plate, not a bin

families' weekly meals

equivalent, estimated

3,444 kg

CO₂e kept out of landfill a year

estimated, Second Harvest basis

The food that doesn't sell doesn't have to end in a dumpster. Same food, a different ending — and a record that it got there.

How would it feel to hand today's good food to a family down the street instead of a dumpster?

That's the ending your customers remember and the standing your business keeps — a neighbourhood that knows where your surplus goes, and a record you can point to. Good food, a right ending.

Every route is weight out of your bin — good food gone to a plate, not a landfill.

Email me my numbers + a no-obligation baseline review

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All figures are estimates built from public data and your own inputs — an aid to your own reporting, not a compliance record or a measured Trophex outcome.

Wages — Ontario general minimum wage $17.60/hr (Employment Standards Act; rises to $17.95 on Oct 1, 2026).

Loaded cost (prepared items) — ingredient cost plus a conservative +30% for the prep labour and energy already spent. Derived from WRAP, True Cost of Waste in Hospitality & Food Service, which puts food at roughly 60–70% of the fully-loaded cost (implying a larger load; +30% is used as a floor).

Climate — a conservative ~2.3 kg CO₂e per kg of food, on the national basis in Second Harvest's 2024 report (avoidable food waste ≈ 25.7M tonnes CO₂e/yr). Driving equivalent at ~0.19 kg CO₂e/km. Meals at ~0.5 kg each; "families' weekly meals" = 84 meals (a family of four, three meals, seven days).

Recovery (single location) — illustrative: about half of good surplus sells same-day (recovering roughly its ingredient cost) and a further ~30% routes to families; some still misses the window. Trophex reduces the weight going to your bin and makes no claim about your disposal cost, which varies by contract.

Chain / enterprise — two separate losses: the sellable value of good food binned (food cost per tonne, editable) and the fee to landfill it. Ontario ICI mixed-waste landfill tipping averages over $100/tonne (range $30–150) and is rising (Partners in Project Green, ICI waste analysis); diverting by-weight tonnage reduces tipping directly. A discounted same-day sale recovers roughly food cost on the sold share (~50% of routed); the rest routes to families. CO₂e at ~2.3 tonnes per tonne of food (same Second Harvest basis).

Compliance — penalties for an unsubstantiated environmental claim reach up to $10M (first offence) or 3% of worldwide gross revenue (Competition Act, C-59 as amended by C-15). Trophex's record is an aid to substantiation — not substantiation or compliance itself.

Substantiation check: every figure is sourced or labelled illustrative; the CO₂e factor is stated as conservative against Second Harvest's own higher number, which is the safe direction; families is now defined (÷84) so the on-page stat isn't a black box; disposal is explicitly "weight, not cost" for single; C-59/C-15 penalty is accurate and framed as risk, with the record as aid, not compliance. No competitor named, no invented audit, no banned phrase. Passes.

The founder story

Why Maria built Trophex — from years of shortage in Armenia to a food bank in North York.

Read the founder story