What if every time you sat down for a meal, you threw one-quarter of it in the trash?
That鈥檚 the hidden story of waste in the hospitality industry, where an eagerness to please customers听has turned into an unseen food scandal.
About 25 per cent of all food that passes through hotel kitchens is thrown out as food waste, and for every diner the hotel serves, about 350 grams is binned, according industry experts Eco-Business spoke to.
Multiply 350g by the hundreds of thousands of hotels and hundreds of rooms, and the figure adds up.听For instance, French hotel giant AccorHotels reports that听food-related waste makes up half of all trash generated on its听properties, though听the amount of waste varies according to the type of hotel.
Luxury hotels under its Sofitel and Pullman听brands, for instance, churn out 47 tonnes of food waste annually, while mid-range names听such as Mercure and Novotel throw away 35 tonnes a year. Economy hotels such as Ibis only produce half that figure,听at 17 tonnes a year.
But the waste footprint of a hotel听could be much higher depending on听its size听and the听number of food and beverage (F&B) outlets on site, says Benjamin Lephilibert, managing director of hotel food waste consultancy Lightblue Consulting.
鈥淥n average we鈥檝e seen hotels waste 35 per cent of all food purchased, with some exceptions like a remote luxury resort in the Maldives,听where the figure reaches a stunning 42 per cent,鈥� he says.
The issue of food waste is especially pertinent in the Asia Pacific region, which is home to听major food-exporting countries such as the Philippines and China, and is also听where most of the world鈥檚 800 million hungry people live.
It is also the new frontier for the hotel industry as economies such as Myanmar open to tourism. The number of rooms in certain Asian cities could grow as much as听30 per cent听 in the next few years, according to real estate firm JLL.
But increasing consumer awareness around听sustainable travel means customers are showing a preference for hotels that can prove their environmental credentials鈥�65 per cent of travellers, to be more precise, reports a study by travel booking portal Booking.com.
Eat Till You Drop
The biggest amount of food wastage occurs due to overproduction in the kitchens, notes Maxime Pourrat, the Singapore-based managing director of food waste prevention firm Winnow Solutions鈥� Asian operations.
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