How Hotel Chain Iberostar Plans to Cut Food Waste in Half in One Year

Iberostar, a hotel chain and global tourism company, aims to send zero waste to landfills by 2025, with a large focus on food waste—a big problem for hotel chains, especially those as large and spread out as Iberostar, who has over 100 properties in 16 countries. 

Gabriel Martorell, Iberostar’s director of sustainability, discusses the Palma de Mallorca, Spain-based company’s plans to reduce food waste by 50 percent in its first year leveraging technology that he says will save more than $7 million annually in time.

Martorell expounds on other strategies to hit the 2025 zero waste goal, and to reach for another fast-approaching target: carbon neutrality by 2030.

Waste360: What are unique challenges to tackling food waste for large hotel chains?

Martorell: Tackling food waste at Iberostar means doing all we can to avoid generating it in the first place. Whether through reducing our plate sizes or updating technology to stay on track. However, we have also needed help on the measurement and quantification of the food waste that we were generating [and with training] on the technology that we introduced to Iberostar [to measure and quantify].

Waste360: What are you doing to address those challenges?

Martorell: As far as the measurement and quantification challenge, through Winnow technology, we are able to measure what we waste to take action to reduce it more and more. The Winnow artificial intelligence system implemented in Iberostar kitchens knows exactly what we throw away, what we save, and it helps inform smarter decisions based on real data that ultimately promotes improvements in the production processes.

We started with Winnow in just a few kitchens, and now we are expanding to all our hotels.

In addition, in response to an integration of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of our business strategies, we developed our Agenda 2030, with a goal to be carbon neutral by 2030. Through our Agenda 2030 we work to accomplish our three key pillars: embracing a circular economy, promoting the responsible consumption of seafood, and improving coastal health.

We aim to be free of waste sent to the landfill by 2025. To begin this journey, we established the hospitality sector’s first department dedicated to removing waste (3R department) whose name comes from the circular economy principles 'Reduce - Reuse – Recycle.’ This department is responsible for segregating, weighing, and analyzing waste.

Waste360: Tell us more about your food waste reduction journey. And share your approach to a problem and the outcome.

Martorell: Iberostar’s food waste journey began long before we announced our 2030 Agenda. With our commitment to become waste-free by 2025, we had to search for solutions that helped us achieve this goal.

We knew that we had to quantify our food waste and develop measurable technology to improve, so the partnership with Winnow made sense as a next step in our strategy.

For example, in Iberostar Selection Bávaro, in the Dominican Republic, we found that we were wasting around 15 percent of our daily croissant production. Our chef updated the order as a result of this information, so we are baking fewer croissants, but of even higher quality. Also, in this hotel, we reduced food waste by 35 percent in the first year of the trial with Winnow’s technology through additional practices such as baking fewer or smaller units, and/or changing products. As a result, we will save about 300,000 meals and $290,000.

Waste360: Where within your operations is the waste occurring?

Martorell: The new Winnow technology has provided us with more detailed data to better understand how everything is used. What we’ve established is that roughly 60 percent of the waste we send to landfill was organic waste, from our gardens, industrial facilities, and our food service.

Waste360: How much will you save both in dollars and food using Winnow’s technology?

Martorell: The financial savings from Iberostar’s new effort with Winnow to reduce food waste will save the company an estimated more than $7 million per year. This is reflective of the goal to reduce food waste by 50 percent in the first year the Winnow system is implemented.

Waste360: Regarding your commitment to zero waste to landfills by 2025 and to “responsible tourism”:  How do you approach these two priorities?  

Martorell: Iberostar is committed to responsible tourism and several major sustainability initiatives, as outlined through our Wave of Change movement. This movement was first launched in 2018 and specifically focuses on our commitment to protecting the oceans.

One major way Iberostar has stepped up in terms of the environment is by removing all single-use plastics in rooms, a feat we accomplished in 2019. In doing this, we removed the use of over 420 tons of plastic annually. This represents a huge step in working towards sending zero waste to landfills by 2025.

Iberostar’s 3R teams that I mentioned earlier are in all of its hotels worldwide [also instrumental to zero waste to landfill goal]. These teams work to centralize waste management from all areas of the hotel under one specific and specialized group of individuals.

Iberostar will reduce 50 percent of emissions from waste disposal by achieving zero waste to landfill by 2025, encouraging continued reduction of waste and improving waste management capacity in destinations.

Iberostar has set yearly targets in order to achieve this goal. For example, we are implementing a Circular Procurement Strategy in our hotels to work to combat waste. Winnow will play an important role in our goal.

In the Americas (Latin America), Iberostar will save around 3,000,000 meals, 1,118 tons of food, and 5,110 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year. In total, with the implementation of this system to combat food waste, Iberostar will stop throwing away almost 5 million meals a year, more than 1,600 tons of food, and will stop emitting almost 8,000 tons of CO2 a year.

We have sustainability as an engine and conductor of business, and we truly believe we are transforming the way in which travel is perceived.

This article has been edited for clarity.