How hotels are becoming smarter about waste | Hotel Management - 0 views
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Resorts, hotels and restaurants generate a lot of waste—from food, packaging, amenity containers, waste water from toilets, kitchens and laundries.
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Food waste accounts for more than 50 percent of waste in the hospitality industry. In the U.S., more than $218 billion is spent on growing, processing, transporting and disposing of food that is never eaten. This is mostly from homes and the foodservice industry, which includes hotels, with a whopping 70 billion pounds of food wasted every year.
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The city of San Francisco has taken some of the most significant waste management steps in the country. After adopting a zero-waste policy in 2002, the city partnered with Recology, its long-term materials management service provider, to implement a five-pronged strategy, which is aiming for zero waste by 2020: Create convenient programs Conduct extensive public outreach Provide generator and service provider incentives Process trash to recover materials Adopt waste-reduction policies
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Recology provides similar economic incentives through its “pay-as-you-throw” program in which the less trash a business discards and the more it recycles and composts, the less it pays for pick-up services.
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“Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources and not burn or bury them. Implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges to land, water or air that are a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.”
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For business, especially hotels and restaurants, Stephanie Barger director of market development, zero waste programs at the U.S. Green Building Council, emphasized that “zero waste businesses are better businesses—better for themselves, better for customers and the communities in which they operate.”