Reducing food production is the solution...not reusing or recycling
Another day, at work at the same hotel, I observed a large quantity of Breuder (with Christmas two days away) been tossed into the dustbin by the head cook at the bakery section because some of the turban-shaped cakes had not come out cleanly when unmolded after baking. This was after almost everyone one us in the kitchen had feasted on deliciously hot broken chunks of sultana-filled cake topped with butter.
Clearly, at that time, waste, especially in the kitchen was not on anyone’s agenda. Nowadays, however, hotels can no longer stay on the fence about food waste – you either are part of the problem or the solution. Part of the problem occurs when a kitchen over-produces a dish in case there won’t be enough to cater to demand. Described by Marc Zornes as “the fear of running out”, this phenomenon results in loads of leftover food.
Another problem is where buffets are more popular in Asia than in Europe. Buffets must look like there is an unlimited supply of food is available. Yes, some food will be reused but the bulk of it will go to the bin and when that happens in the Asia Pacific region, where ironically close to a billion hungry people live – that’s one of the biggest crimes against food in the industry…by the industry.
Eco-business reports that according to industry experts about 25% 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 waste-binned. Multiply 350g by the millions of diners including guests in hundreds of thousands of hotels and the figure adds up.
As per Xenia zu Hohenlohe, director and partner at Considerate Group, Munich and London, there is over 1.3 billion tons of food waste globally every year, representing not just a huge economic loss but also an enormous impact on global Co2 emissions (it has been calculated that if food waste were a country, it would be the third-biggest Co2 emitter worldwide).
I cringe whenever I have to throw away a bottle of sauce or packaged food from the refrigerator because it had passed it’s ‘use-by’ date. Immediately, my mind does a rapid calculation of the value of unused food I am forced to discard. Likewise, it may be a good idea to get hotel employees to see the value of the food they are tossing out. People then feel guilty and commit to reducing waste once they have the data. Basically, what get’s measured gets managed.
Installing weighing scales and software in restaurant kitchens, where hotel staff can use them to weigh and record the amount and type of food they are throwing away, with the software displaying the corresponding carbon emissions and cost price of the food is one major way of tackling hotel food waste.
Prevention should be at the top of the waste recovery food chain. Merely focusing on composting or recycling waste and not preventing it…is simply not enough. When a pipe begins to leak, one first plugs or shuts the source of supply before mopping up the water on the ground. Similarly, cutting waste at the source is the most eco-cost effective approach.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, “Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-hotelier. |
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Whilst studying at the Ceylon Hotel School (now the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management), my 1st year internship was at at the 5-star Ceylon Inter-Continental hotel in Colombo. I was assigned to work in the main kitchen. One evening, we were making a bulk quantity of mayonnaise and whilst adding the olive oil gradually into the large bowl of the blender, the hotel’s Austrian sous chef came by, peered into the bowl, stopped the machine and dumped the entire contents in the bowl – 200 egg yolks plus whatever oil we had poured in up until then, into the dustbin. I guess he felt the mayo had not stabilised enough and that the end product was not going to be good enough. I still recall him shrugging both his shoulders as he walked away, yelling “Schnell, schnell, make it again you dummkopfs”.