Food Waste Lessons Learned in Egypt
The New York Times recently wrote about a critical food waste sanitation problem that has developed in Egypt. The background is that the Egyptian government required all pigs in the country to be slaughtered this past spring in a (misguided) effort to reduce swine flu risk. What they failed to realize was that these pigs were playing a critical role as consumer’s of Cairo’s food waste.
Exit the pigs, enter large volumes of decomposing food waste strewn throughout the city.
Is there a lesson for foodservice operators in this story? I think so. We, as foodservice and hospitality operators, have become so reliant on municipal and commercial waste management solutions that we take them for granted. We assume there will always be someone there to accept the food waste we generate. This may not always be true.
Indeed, there are people and companies who believe food waste will be prevented by regulation from going to landfills in the U.S. within the next decade. Where will foodservice operators send their food waste then?
The answer is that we will have to be creative and develop source reduction programs (using proven practices such as food waste tracking), donation programs, and waste-to-energy or composting solutions. In fact, it’s likely our future waste management vendors and partners will look very different from the companies and services we are using today for food waste.
As the Egyptians have learned, discarding food waste in a sanitary manner is not a “right”. It’s the outcome of careful thought and design. There has to be a system in place to handle that waste or else you have nothing but a big mess.
As foodservice operators think about the future, we have a chance to carefully design and envision a world of “zero food waste.” This doesn’t mean we won’t generate any waste. However, it does mean that through a combination of source reduction and diversion (i.e. composting, donation), we can send zero food waste to the landfill at the end of the day. Simply stated, we will have to put all our food waste to its highest and best use.
