Category: Hospitality industry

Hotel Kitchen Toolkit for Managing Food Waste

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, came together to work with the hospitality industry on understanding and reducing food waste. Through research and a series of demonstration projects with properties across the country, innovative strategies were identified to engage staff, partners and guests in cutting waste from hotel kitchens.

Participating hotels saw reductions of 10-38% in just 12 weeks. If this scaled across the industry – it would eliminate half a million tons of waste within a year.

This toolkit provides the background, tools and resources a property of any size needs to:

  • prevent food waste from occurring at their properties;
  • donate what cannot be prevented but is still safe for people to eat; and
  • divert the rest away from landfills.

Access the toolkit.

easyJet leverages sustainability AI to reduce food waste

Read the full story at Sustainability.

To manage the impact of one of its most popular hotels in Tenerife, easyJet Holidays will leverage AI as a sustainable solution for food waste reduction

Citizen Food Waste Attitudes and Behaviours Out of Home

Download the report.

WRAP is working with Hospitality and Food Service (HaFS) businesses to help the sector reduce wasted food. This includes targeted support for pubs, hotels, restaurants, Quick Service Restaurants, Healthcare, Education, Leisure, Services and Staff Catering. Through initiatives such as the Hospitality and Food Service Agreement, the Food Waste Reduction Roadmap, Guardians of Grub and the Courtauld Commitment 2030, WRAP is helping the sector to deliver a 50% reduction in food waste by 2030, in line with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3.

WRAP research shows that the majority of food waste arisings in the UK is generated by households, but the waste coming from the HaFS sector is not negligible – 1.1Mt is the total food waste arisings from the sector; and on average, 18% of the food purchased is being thrown away. Food waste costs the HaFS sector £3.2 billion every year.

WRAP undertook research about citizen food waste out home for the first time in 2012. Since
then, WRAP conducted follow up research in March 20203 (unpublished) before building on the
findings in 2022. The main findings address the following research questions:

  • What is the frequency of eating out of home; and how has this changed as a result of the cost-of-living crisis
  • What are the estimated levels of food left uneaten out of home; when and what type of food is typically left uneaten and in which venues and occasions it occurs
  • What happens to food left uneaten
  • Why do customers leave food when eating out and what are their attitudes to uneaten food
  • What are citizens’ portion sizing behaviours and what are the barriers to enhance them further

The latest research updates the insights and assesses any changes that might have occurred
after the changes that have taken place in the HaFS sector with businesses and organisations
increasingly expected to undertake measures to ensure sustainability in their operations and
supply chain.

Webinar: Financing Solutions that Improve Efficiency in Both Energy and Water: A Focus on Hospitality

Oct 18, 2922 10 am CT
Register here.

The efficient use of water results in lower operating costs, a more reliable water supply, and improved water quality. Join to learn how market leaders in the hospitality sector finance and deploy projects that tackle energy efficiency and the water conservation nexus.

Washing dishes with superheated steam more effective, earth-friendly

Read the full story from AIP Publishing.

Conventional dishwashers often do not kill all the harmful microorganisms left on plates, bowls, and cutlery. They also require long cycle times that use large quantities of electricity, and the soap pumped in and out is released into water sources, polluting the environment.

Superheated steam dishwashers could provide a more effective, environmentally friendly solution. In a recent article published in Physics of Fluids, researchers from the Technical University of Dortmund and the Technical University of Munich simulated such a dishwasher, finding that it killed 99% of bacteria on a plate in just 25 seconds.

Getting the world clean, one recycled bar of soap at a time

Read the full story in the New York Times.

Meet Shawn Seipler, the founder of Clean the World. The nonprofit recycles partially used soap left behind from hotel guests for those in need.

The surprising afterlife of used hotel soap

Read the full story at The Hustle.

Hotel guests leave behind millions of half-used bars of soap every day. A nonprofit is on a mission to repurpose them.

IHG Hotels & Resorts Green Engage Program

Read the case study from U.S DOE’s Better Buildings Program.

IHG Hotels & Resorts provides all its hotels with access to the IHG Green Engage system, a comprehensive online sustainability platform that allows hotels to track, measure, and report on their carbon footprint and utility consumption. The system also offers more than 200 “Green Solutions” to help hotels drive resource efficiency and reduce their environmental footprints, as well as detailed technical guidance that hotels can use to implement these solutions.

Piloted in 2009, the program’s initial successes and support from the independent IHG Owners Association led to the adoption of IHG Green Engage as a foundational standard for all IHG-branded hotels globally in 2015.

Shipping container boutique hotel planned for Haughville neighborhood

Read the full story from Indianapolis Business Journal.

An Indianapolis company is building a boutique hotel using repurposed shipping containers to accommodate guests seeking unusual experiences in the heart of the city.

Constructing a green and sustainable future

Read the full story at HospitalityNet.

In today’s climate following the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing a strong demand, both from investors and consumers for green with a health and wellbeing framework to ensure that sustainability is at the forefront at every level, from the design and construction of new hotels, including the health of construction workers, to the comfort of those who work in and occupy the buildings, to the impact of the buildings on our environment.