How much did you leave on your plate last time you ate? A few scrapings? A couple of bits and pieces? Or perhaps even a few mouthfuls you were too stuffed to finish off? It is worth considering, then, that every time you throw leftovers away, you’re not just binning tomorrow’s lunch but are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions before they even got to your plate. Growing, processing, packaging, and transporting the food we eat all contribute to climate change. 

It has been estimated that if food waste was a country, it would be the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. One-third of greenhouse emissions globally come from agriculture, and 30 percent of the food we produce is wasted – about 1.8 billion tonnes of it a year. If, as a planet, we stopped wasting food altogether, we’d eliminate 8 percent of our total emissions. The cost of food waste is inconceivable and irreversible: wasting food wastes money, along with the water and energy it took to produce that food.

Traditional food waste reduction strategies have focused on the household level, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of national food waste. But the foodservice industry has huge potential for savings, with more than one million restaurant locations. A new study focused on reducing food waste in the restaurant industry found that anywhere from four to 10 percent of food purchased by restaurants never gets to customers, while 30 to 40 percent of the food served to customers never gets consumed.

How Food Waste is Linked to F&B Sector

All that food waste is expensive: according to the USDA, the restaurant industry loses 162 billion dollars annually thanks to wasted food. Food is lost or wasted for a variety of reasons: bad weather, processing problems, overproduction, and unstable markets cause food loss long before it arrives in a grocery store, while overbuying, poor planning, and confusion over labels and safety contribute to food waste at stores and in homes. While implementing new systems can be tricky, especially in the chaotic world of restaurants, the cost-to-benefit ratio should be a convincing reason to make the change.

Various restaurants have been adhering to many best practices to prevent or control food wastage. At Novotel Mumbai Juhu Beach, they adhere to some of the effective best practices to control/reduce food wastage such as composting bio-degradable food waste and using it as manure for gardening; coming up with recipes that incorporate peels, seeds, and edible food scraps; making soups, broths using peels, veggies, and food scrap; growing your own produce. Lots of seeds and veggie scraps can be re-grown into new veggies

Many restaurants are coming up with various best practices to reduce food wastage. Food wastage is inevitable to a certain extent, as not everything can be consumed, always. It is important for restaurants to learn to reduce food waste, which not only will help the environment, but also save a business money in the long run. A number of restaurants have started composting bio-degradable food waste which helps in contributing to environmental purposes. 

Wasted Food Isn't Just a Social or Humanitarian Concern

Accor as a group is deeply committed to sustainable value creation and plays an active role in giving back to the planet and community. “At Novotel Mumbai Juhu Beach we actively follow positive hospitality. Waste is segregated as wet and dry and we compost wet bio-degradable waste instead of throwing it away in the bin. The compost is then used for our in-house chef-managed gardens where we grow our own herbs and vegetables,”  Jerson Fernandes, executive chef, Novotel Mumbai Juhu Beach commented. 

It is encouraging to see that every day more and more restaurants are going green, implementing recycling and composting as part of their business model. While some hotel chains are adapting to the norm of reducing food waste in unique ways. At Treehouse properties in Goa, the company has consciously stepped away from serving food at properties except for breakfast. 

According to Jayant Singh, managing partner at Treehouse, food is an integral part of the entire Goa experience and there is no way one can experience that while limiting one's stay at one place. There are so many interesting places serving varied cuisines to cater to all sorts of tourists; therefore, one needs to step out of the property to enjoy and experience these eateries. And most importantly it reduces the food waste that can happen within the property.  

The Barbeque Company has joined hands with Robin Hood Army in Delhi, Gurugram, and Jaipur serving 310 freshly made meals a week. “We believe if we have excess inventory of food in-store. Please don't let it go waste. There is a huge chunk population who struggles hard to earn three meals a day. We are a blessed and privileged class from restaurants. Should stand by the needy and not let the food go waste. Food is life for us and many who fight hard to get the same,” The Barbeque Company’s founder, Harmandeep Singh said.

Awareness is the Key

A popular luxury stays in Coorg, Karnataka, The Ibnii Coorg is not just another nature retreat with breathtaking views, pristine pools, or beautiful interiors. It is also the seat of an innovative and important initiative – the ‘Weigh The Waste, Feed A Child’- which involves showing a social mirror to its guests by weighing their food wastage every time they eat at one of their restaurants.

In other words, on arrival every guest is informed that they will be charged for the leftovers on their table INR 100 per 10 grams, to send out a positive message against food wastage.

Talking about the initiative, the resort spokesperson, CSR, and Marketing Advisor Shreya Krishnan said, “Last year, during a breakfast meeting at our restaurant, our Managing Director, Sherry Sebastian noticed and was shocked by the volume of food wastage. You see, at Ibnii, we prepare every single dish with a lot of care and consciousness. It is all organic and sourced in the right manner so every morsel thrown away is a big dent in that process. And when this scenario is pitted against the existence of a huge population of malnourished people in India, the matter becomes even more serious. Hence we took a step to stop this.”

Opened in 2016, the resort makes an attempt to leave a minimal carbon footprint and this move is a step towards it. And so in a matter of just three months, they were able to collect around INR 20,000 which was later utilized to help feed and educate young girls in an orphanage in Madikeri.

Food wastage is one of the quickest growing concerns in the food industry and one of the top offenders of global pollution. If not arrested on time, this can even lead to the shutting down of that particular food business.