Sustainable Food: Reduction of food waste in Spain

Results

• Training of almost 30 employees from management and F&B areas of a total of 4 hotels of the R2 hotel chain on Fuerteventura and Mallorca on the topic of sustainable nutrition, especially information on sustainable purchasing processes, use of local and sustainable products as well as guest communication on sustainable cuisine were part of the training .
• 35% reduction in food waste in pilot hotel by adapting internal processes, behavior patterns and improved food processing

The industry project serves as the basis “Sustainable Food”

The “Sustainable Food” industry project showed that raising awareness and training employees is one of the key factors and basis for anchoring sustainable F&B processes and sustainable behavior in the job. On the other hand, the positive effect of continuous food waste measurements to avoid and reduce avoidable food waste has been proven.

The Schauinsland-reisen project took up the findings and measures from the Futouris industry project and carried them into the R2 hotels in Spain.

Employee training and waste analysis

In the first step, a total of around 30 employees from the management and F&B areas of the R2 Hotels on Fuerteventura and Mallorca were trained on the topic of “sustainable food” by project partner COMPASS in spring 2019. Training content included sustainable purchasing, taking local and seasonal foods into account, as well as practical approaches to avoiding food waste.

In the second part of the project, the focus was entirely on reducing food waste. With the support of our partner United Against Waste e.V., food waste was measured and analyzed in the pilot hotel over a period of four weeks. In collaboration with the employees, measures to reduce food waste were then developed and tested in practice for at least 12 weeks from July 2019. In order to check the success of the measures, food waste was measured a second time after the implementation phase was completed.

Successfully implemented and effective reduction measures were adopted in the other hotels of the R2 hotel group after the measurement phases were completed.

At the end of the project, the successfully tested measures recommended for reducing food waste were published and made available to Futouris members.