Save money, satisfy guests, & join the fight against food waste

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity advoc­ate and “waste fight­er” Lauren Khar­ouni presents the case against food waste, the busi­ness case for redu­cing it, and simple ways to start.

Have you ever taken a closer look at data on glob­al food waste? If not, take a seat, the num­bers are strik­ing. Oth­er­wise, a short remind­er could not hurt.

Every year, the UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Organ­iz­a­tion estim­ates that a third of food pro­duced for human con­sump­tion is wasted. 

• From a social per­spect­ive, this is a heart­break­ing para­dox as it would be enough to feed three bil­lion people.
• From an envir­on­ment­al per­spect­ive, think about all resources (land, water, energy, labor) required to pro­duce, store, pro­cess and dis­trib­ute food products. Did you know that more than 17,000 liters of water are required to get 1 kg of your favor­ite chocol­ate bar? In the end, all these nat­ur­al resources also end up in the bin, being use­lessly exploited. Actu­ally, if food waste was a coun­try, it would be the third biggest green­house gas emit­ter, right after the United States and China.
• From an eco­nom­ic per­spect­ive, Boston Con­sult­ing Group (BCG) estim­ates that this glob­al food waste is worth $1.2 trillion.

In the hos­pit­al­ity industry up to 40% of all food pur­chased is thrown into the bin. This is accord­ing to our estim­ates based on cus­tom­ers’ case studies. 

Tak­ing action to tackle food waste is key to improv­ing the envir­on­ment­al and social per­form­ance of organ­iz­a­tions — my main con­cern as a sus­tain­ab­il­ity advoc­ate — but also their eco­nom­ic per­form­ance — the main con­cern of busi­ness managers. 

To put it simply, throw­ing away food is throw­ing away money. Tack­ling food waste makes busi­ness sense!

The business case for reducing food waste

At Light­Blue Envir­on­ment­al Con­sult­ing we have seen food waste pre­ven­tion pro­grams cut food waste per cov­er (per guest) by up to 12 per­cent­age points.

Fur­ther­more, con­sumers are increas­ingly con­cerned about the envir­on­ment­al and social impacts of their con­sump­tion prac­tices, and most of them want to walk the talk while traveling.

• 48% of people rate food waste as one of their most press­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity con­cerns (Thought­Works con­sultancy firm, 2018)
• 95% of busi­ness trav­el­ers sur­veyed believe the hotel industry should be under­tak­ing ‘green’ ini­ti­at­ives (Hos­pit­al­ity 2015 report by Deloitte)

When hotels reduce food waste and find innov­at­ive ways to reuse or trans­form leftovers, they can (1) meet emer­ging demand, (2) improve / anti­cip­ate cus­tom­ers sat­is­fac­tion, and (3) man­age repu­ta­tion risk.

Three barriers to reducing food waste

So, why is there no glob­al move­ment yet with­in the hos­pit­al­ity industry to tackle food waste strong and fast?

We could high­light three main pre­con­ceived ideas con­sti­tut­ing bar­ri­ers to over­come. Let’s invest­ig­ate if you are sub­jec­ted to one of them. 

The perception gap

“I have very low / no food waste in my operations.”

Do you know pre­cisely how much food is wasted through your oper­a­tions and what are the asso­ci­ated costs? Food busi­nesses with no food waste mon­it­or­ing sys­tem tend to under­es­tim­ate the quant­ity of food wasted and the asso­ci­ated fin­an­cial impact by a factor of 5 to 10.

Lack of knowledge

“I offer neither buf­fets nor break­fast. I am not con­cerned by food waste.” 

When you think about food waste in your oper­a­tions, do you believe that buf­fets and break­fast are where all waste occurs? Well, most play­ers mis­un­der­stand food waste in their oper­a­tions. In fact, up to 50% of food waste hap­pens before con­sumers even see the food. Buf­fet waste accounts for only 15 to 20% of all food waste. And break­fast is actu­ally the most effi­cient shift in terms of food waste management.

Incomplete Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

“My food oper­a­tions are effi­cient. I have a good food cost percentage” 

The food cost per­cent­age indic­at­or is widely used in the industry. It is of course very inter­est­ing to define a pri­cing policy. How­ever, food cost per­cent­age does not reflect how well food busi­nesses are util­iz­ing food as a resource. Do you look at oth­er KPIs to have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of your level of efficiency? 

Join the fight against food waste

Here are some things you can do now to join the fight against food waste:

• Imple­ment a food waste mon­it­or­ing sys­tem and assess your performance
• Define a clear food waste pre­ven­tion strategy and action plan
• Ana­lyze your food man­age­ment prac­tices and identi­fy rel­ev­ant best practices 
• Raise your staff aware­ness and train them on new practices
• Find innov­at­ive food waste solu­tions while keep­ing in mind the food waste pyr­am­id (see above)
  • REDUCE: the first object­ive is to pre­vent food waste before it occurs
  • REDIRECT: for human con­sump­tion, anim­al feed, or sec­ond­ary mar­kets for indus­tri­al use (e.g. nat­ur­al tex­tile made from pine­apple leaf fiber)
  • REPURPOSE: com­post, trans­form into energy, trans­form into clean­ing products
• Adopt a com­pre­hens­ive frame­work and get your effort recog­nized by the PLEDGE on Food Waste.

For inspir­a­tion, dis­cov­er how Pull­man Bangkok suc­ceeded in sav­ing 21,000 kg of food and redu­cing its food cost per cov­er by 6% with­in five months.

Fea­tured image: How many organ­ic waste bins do you use? How much food is your tour­ism or hos­pit­al­ity busi­ness wast­ing? Image copy­right: © Light­Blue Envir­on­ment­al Consulting

About the author

To com­ple­ment the busi­ness strategy and man­age­ment at the heart of her edu­ca­tion, Lauren Khar­ouni chose sus­tain­ab­il­ity as her area of expert­ise. Appalled at tour­is­m’s waste foot­print, Lauren joined Light­Blue Envir­on­ment­al Con­sult­ing, a Bangkok-based social enter­prise that sup­ports the hos­pit­al­ity sec­tor in adopt­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices that make busi­ness sense, par­tic­u­larly food waste pre­ven­tion. She is also a cer­ti­fied sus­tain­able tour­ism auditor.