Food Waste is one of the biggest global issues that we, unfortunately, haven’t been able to tackle effectively worldwide. In the EU (European Union), more than 88 million tons of food waste are generated each year. This then leads the EU to declare food waste as the targeted SDG goals priorities, adopted in agenda 2030. There are lots of industries that are directly responsible for food waste such as Supermarkets, Restaurants, Bakeries, and etc. To this extent, the hospitality industry, with a market value of over US$600 billion in 2018 requires specific attention. This industry is responsible for significant amounts of waste, more than one-third of which is food waste.
fig 1. source: https://media.suara.com/pictures/970x544/2019/12/18/10669-sustainable-development-goals-sdgs.jpg
88 million tons is not a small number. In fact, food waste has a big contribution in producing greenhouse gas which is produced from the methane gas from the foods that are being dumped. It might sound impossible to overcome this problem in a few seconds, but we can help our earth by doing a small action to reduce the amount of food waste. So, we did a short journalistic action in order to know how much food is being wasted in a certain sector. In this case, we chose hospitality as our main stakeholder and used Moermans’ hierarchy as our parameters to get a specific level at managing their food waste.
Hotel's Buffet and Room Service's Food
Breakfast buffet and room service food are common things in the hospitality business especially if we are talking about hotels. However, have you guys wondered what happens in the hotel's kitchen and the unfinished food that you ordered through the room service? The hotel's buffet is one of the most contributing sections in food waste number for each year. Based on Reconomy.com hotels produced 79,000 tonnes of food waste each year. This happens because the hotel's Buffet often over-produced the food portion and the room service food is left uneaten. There are some hotel's that concerning about this data. However, in a certain country, food waste management is still not a big thing.
Fig. 2 source: https://cdnt.orami.co.id/unsafe/468x323/cdn-cas.orami.co.id/parenting/images/6-buffet.width-800.jpg
In-depth Interview and Research
As we mentioned earlier, doing nothing is not going to help. It might be hard but a small action might help this problem! So, we did a small interview and research in order to know about what happened in the hotel's kitchen and how they managed their food waste.
The first step was to do in-depth interviews and personal communication to get a better understanding of food waste management trends in hotels as well as to dig deeper into hotel kitchens and hotel food services weaknesses. Our data were analyzed according to a content analysis approach. Both of our interviewees are the grand managers from Nirwana Hotel and Hotel Pavilion. Our findings sum up shows that food waste at the hospitality level significantly depends on the customer's meal satisfaction level and lack of kitchen familiarity with food preparation.
After we did the interview, we learned that Mr.Imam who works at Nirwana Hotel located in Pekalongan said that the hotel’s food waste management is still in preventive step based on Moermans’ hierarchy chart. The hotel doesn't give the leftover surplus to people to re-consume it but rather they just calculate the food portion at the right number so overproducing won't happen in the meantime. Moreover, the same thing happens in the Pavilion Hotel where the chefs cook the food at the right portions but sometimes the cooks eat the food surplus to prevent food from being wasted, or if the food has passed the expiration date they just dump it the food into the garbage can.
Looking back to our respondents which are Imam and Andry who work at a hotel. Food waste management is still not a thing in this field, as a result, it produces a lot of food waste. Based on the data that Hotels — produce 289,700 tonnes of waste each year, including 79,000 tonnes of food waste (9% total food waste from the sector). (https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/hospitality-industry-waste/51174/)
What Can We Do Tomorrow?
What can we do as a young generation? It is obvious that we should fight for it and through all the research and findings above, we come up with two solutions. Our first solution is to conduct an audit to record how much food is being wasted and why it is being wasted. So the hotels’ chefs can keep track of the food supply and prevent the food waste production number from increasing. Our second solution is to create a technology that can digest food waste into a liquid with the help of biochips that works just like our land on earth.
But what can we do now? All these foods that are being wasted need action not just a tool. But how? What can we do for tomorrow? Simple, we as a part of the household can always do as simple as we can such as finish everything that is on your plate. Or reuse the food surplus and the leftovers. It might not bring a big impact but small habits lead to greatness.