Food waste management: it’s a topic that many like to table - fashionably, though mostly in theory - but which few hotel and food and beverage operators here have yet to commit to undertaking seriously.
Until the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Singapore came along. The 5-star hotel along Orchard Road serves between 4,000 and 5,000 meals a day across its five restaurants, generating around 1,000kg of food waste daily.
(Read more: the Michelin inspectors' picks of Singapore's top hotels)
Thanks to a recent partnership with Singapore-based Biomax Technologies and a $250,000 grant from the National Environment Agency through its 3R (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) Fund, the hotel has installed a 1,000-litre digester machine that now converts 100 per cent of its food waste into around 250 to 300 kilograms of pathogen-free, organic fertiliser – all within just 24 hours.
The project will help Grand Hyatt Singapore reduce the manpower required to physically move food waste into the waste compactors, and cut down on the use of 55,000 trash bags yearly. This amounts to an approximate $100,000 worth of annual savings in food waste haulage fees and various operational expenses, estimates the hotel’s executive chef Lucas Glanville.
Watch the video below or on the Grand Hyatt Singapore Facebook page to find out more from about how the system works and on the Hyatt hotels' 2020 vision for sustainability.
