Baskets of pastries, piles of fruit, coffee you don’t have to brew yourself, and eggs cooked at least two different ways—this is the spread at the quintessential hotel buffet. While buffets give the freedom of portioning, sometimes it is hard to resist. For diners, uneaten food are leftovers that are whisked out of sight. For the hotel, it’s another form of waste they have to deal with. The hardest part? Making it sustainable.
Image of a breakfast buffet with table seating. Opera Cadet from PARIS, FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Sustainable food waste management poses a growing challenge for hotel groups. In 2022, food service and retail industries globally wasted the equivalent of 400 million meals every day. Hotels are taking action to counter this issue. A recent study has found those strategies are not enough.
From a corporate perspective, food waste management is a means to meet sustainability goals and reporting requirements within the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework. Even Hilton, one of many big hotel chains, uses this approach. Their “Travel With Purpose Report,” adopts the general ESG structure in their reporting. How are these goals put into action? Certification programs. These programs require companies to commit to sustainability standards through compliance methods, like audits.
The problem: corporate goals are not translating into practice at individual hotels.
As an auditor from the study puts, “there is a huge discrepancy between the official policies and what is actually happening (around food waste).” Other certification professionals agreed, citing a lack of access to sufficient resources, like financial means. “[Individual hotels] don’t really have time to do things that aren’t going to have some kind of immediate payback for them.” Without the proper support, hotels are less likely to follow through with food waste alternatives.
This can also be seen in how goals are set.
Benchmarks often focused on “what was easy and convenient to report,” ignoring “the local ecology and social context.” Certification programs also use more common definitions that are “incompatible” with different work methods and thought processes, such as those of indigenous communities.
To bring big picture solutions to the local level, the study suggests implementing regenerative practices. On a fundamental level, regeneration can be understood as something undergoing growth again. In tourism, it means taking the extra step to improve the local environment, culture and people (as opposed to only minimizing the impacts of tourism as practiced by sustainable tourism).
A family-owned business in New Zealand is doing just that. At Kohutapu Lodge and Tribal Tours, guests help with preparing a traditional Māori Hangi feast with ingredients that vary depending on the season. They may even have the opportunity to take part in traditional eel trapping. These practices not only encourage better appreciation of the food and culture, but also ensure there is little to no excess food that could go to waste.
While Kohutapu Lodge may seem like an exceptional case, they show that regenerative practices are not impossible to implement. For hotels using certification programs, improvement can start from adopting a regenerative perspective. Regeneration is only possible when considering the individual local conditions. By having a more defined focus, individual hotels would have better incentive to consider the natural resources and local practices available to them. The perspective can also help foster a more proactive mindset where waste can be used to improve the local environment, rather than simply be reduced and ignored.
Currently, the likelihood of regenerative practices being implemented by major hotel chains is unlikely. More awareness will have to be brought to the concept before large changes can be made. However, it could be the solution that hotels need to improve food waste management.