Simple & creative solutions to reduce food waste

Did you know that in Germany alone around 11 mio. tons of food land in the trash every year? A conscious handling of food and food leftovers should start within one’s own home, but should not stop there.Hotels and restaurants also have to deal with the problem of food waste. Where should food leftovers be put? And what is the best way to avoid overproduction right from the start? The kitchens of our hotels have long since come up with a solution and surprise with simple but creative solutions.

SMART PLANNING & MENU INSTEAD OF BUFFET

You can start with good planning. When preparing the meals, the number of guests is taken into account, buffets are not made too full and even when preparing a menu, attention is paid to the size of the portions. A good preparation and planning can be done by most of our green hotels. At Creativhotel Luise, when preparing the breakfast buffet, careful attention is paid to ensuring that there are not too many perishable foods on the table. Also in the SCHWARZWALD PANORAMA, food waste is avoided by special loading procedures for buffets. Why is a menu more sustainable? Because, due to hygiene regulations, a buffet ends up with a lot of waste.

CONSCIOUS EATING MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

The hotel operator of the Gili Lankanfushi is living it. He sensitizes his employees with a so-called “No-Bin-Day” for a conscious handling of food. This encourages them to consume smaller portions and to eat everything on their plates so that nothing ends up in the trash. We can also learn a thing or two about this on our next vacation. It is better to go to the buffet several times than to put too much on the plate from the beginning. And we remember the saying of our childhood: “If you eat it all up, there will be good weather tomorrow!” The Hotel Outside also has a good idea against food waste. They serve rather small portions, but a second helping is always welcome!

CREATIVE LEFTOVER CUISINE

If food leftovers do occur, our creative chefs have come up with something special. Hofgut Hafnerleiten, for example, will show you what else can be made from food leftovers. Leftovers from the kitchen can be used to make wonderful sauces, broths, stocks, and fillings. From the baguette from the day before you can still make delicious bruschetta. In the Berg.See.Küche of the gourmet hotel Die Forelle is dried and ground to powder. This then lands as a topping on the breakfast buffet. From this, by the way, a beet latte can also be produced very well. The idea of using as much of a food as possible is also a good approach. For example, you can make an excellent pesto out of the greens of a carrot.

CLOSING THE CYCLE: EARTH-TO-TABLE-TO-SOIL

Many of our hotels have their own hotel gardens where they grow organic vegetables and fruits. So does the Gili Lankanfushi. Food leftovers end up on the compost, which in turn provides valuable nutrients for the organic garden. The managing director of Gili Lankanfushi proves that it is not difficult to create your own compost. It is important to know which foods are allowed on the compost, e.g. vegetable peels, coffee grounds, or eggshells. Also, the Hofgut Hafnerleiten and the Keemala run their own compost to fertilize the hotel garden. The Biohotel Grafenast goes one step further and produces its organic fertilizer using a highly efficient composting machine. Almost all food leftovers can be thrown in and the result is a high-quality, dry, and low-odor organic fertilizer that can be used immediately. The food leftovers of SCHWARZWALD PANORAMA and Reethi Faru end up either in the compost of the garden or in the own biogas plant. The biogas produced can then be used for cooking, for example, reducing the need for traditional, non-renewable cooking gas.

FOOD SHARING

Organizations such as foodsharing or Too Good To Go want to work against food waste by collecting and distributing food from supermarkets, restaurants, cafés, and bakeries that have been sorted out early, leftovers and expired but is still edible. Some hotels have also adopted this approach in their kitchens. In the Creativhotel Luise, leftover and expired but still edible food is passed on to employees. In the Keemala villa wonderland, a very special partnership has been created: With the organization Scholars of Sustenance in Phuket, surplus food from the restaurant is redistributed to disadvantaged communities and homes for orphans throughout Phuket.