UAE: Hilton has seen a 20 per cent reduction in post-consumer food waste during its Green Ramadan initiative.
This year the programme was across 32 hotels in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Turkey and Malaysia and served 239,000 guests during iftars and suhoors.
Staff at participating hotels had sustainability training, and focused on local sourcing, waste management, and diversion by donation and composting where possible.
The hotels also used methods such as guest messaging, smaller portions, live cooking stations, reduced food displays and switching to à la carte menus rather than buffets.
Items observed to be most frequently wasted included bread and pastry, vegetables and meats.
The campaign was launched as a collaboration between Hilton, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) West Asia under the Recipe of Change campaign, and Winnow, the B Corp AI-enabled food waste management solution.
Before this year’s initiative began hotel teams were given a food waste prevention playbook based on key learnings from Green Ramadan 2023 when food waste was reduced by more than 60 per cent.
Hilton says these insights contributed to the success of the 2024 campaign, with food waste being reduced by 21 per cent over the course of the month-long effort.
This is equivalent to more than 1.7 tonnes of food waste being avoided – enough to provide 4,300 meals.
More than 7.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions were also prevented, equating to 488,523 smartphone charges, as hotel guests adopted more sustainable habits during their stays.
Image: © 2024 Hilton