Food wastage and its impacts on sustainable business operations: a study on Sri Lankan tourist hotels

Abstract

Sri Lanka’s hotel industry is one of the key drivers of economic growth in the island nation and the tourist arrivals have almost doubled since the end of the conflict in 2009. In order to cater to this snowballing tourist traffic, many new tourist hotels are being emerged. The hospitality sector is considered as a high energy consumer which produces a large amount of solid food waste. This has placed a huge strain on resources and created immense challenges in the efficient use of these resources as well as the disposal of their waste. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to discuss the food wastage in tourist hotels and its impact on sustainable hotel operations. Apart from that, it discusses the issues and challenges associated with the implementation of sustainable food waste management practices in hotels. The study was carried out as a qualitative study using randomly selected 20 star class hotels and the data collected through personal interviews, focused group discussions and personal observations. It was found that while the awareness of the need to minimize food wastage is high among management, and also has taken efforts to reduce the cost through food waste minimization, however, the hoteliers also have faced various challenges mainly due to the perception and behavioural patterns of customers which is beyond their control. Furthermore, the inherent characteristics of the industry have contributed for the high wastage of food. A few hoteliers have been succeeded in getting benefits from the food wastage such as installing bio gas digesters. So, one step that will help is to encourage the hotel industry to embrace and adopt food waste minimizing strategies and methods in order to achieve the environmental sustainability while increasing their financial profits.