URBANA, Ill. (WAND) — Carle Foundation Hospital is fighting back on food waste, and has implemented a new technology that should help keep those food waste numbers to a minimum. 

It's called Leanpath. At first glance, it's just a scale and tablet.

But in actuality, the scale is programmed to see what the food is, and determine the dollar amount of food that's being wasted.

From there, it saves all the data that others have programmed, and can create charts showing the quantity of certain foods that are being thrown away instead of being consumed. 

The program has been used for 9 months, and has already been extremely successful according to the Director of Food and Nutrition Services Kevin Steffes. 

"We set a goal that we would reduce our food waste by about 40% from our baseline. Since that point, we are at about a 37 or 38% reduction in wasted food. I think that represents around like $44,000 thousand in savings," said Steffes.

There are a few things that the food services team has been able to accomplish since implementing this new technology.

They have been able to reduced how much food is going into the landfill. 

"Food waste is generally going to the landfill, and creating greenhouse gasses. So if we can reduce what goes into the landfill, that's a great thing," said Steffes.

It also helps staff keep an eye on how much they truly need to prepare.

"If we buy food, we're spending money on it initially. If we're overproducing food, we're spending labor and all the resources to produce the food. And if it's being wasted in the end, it's kind of a double whammy with economic resources," said Steffes.

And it helps save more food for others.

"I think there's a lot of food insecurity in our communities. Food that's brought in and wasted obviously can't service anybody that's in need of food. I hate to see food go to waste. So anything that we can do to improve our efforts around that, I think are fantastic," said Steffes. 

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