Buffet waste

I am travelling for work this week – first Paris, France and then Helsinki, Finland – so I’ve got a few hotel buffet breakfasts on the menu. As such, comments from celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, on the ‘food waste nightmare’ of the hotel breakfast buffet, have come at a fitting time.

Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has been campaigning against food waste and last year presented Hugh’s War on Waste on BBC1 in the UK, was addressing a committee of MPs investigating food waste.

“The breakfast buffet is one of the big nightmares,” he explained. “It must always be inexhaustible and always full and always look perfect – and it must look like that when the first guests come down at 6:30 in the morning and it must still look like that when the last guests go on their way at 10am.”

This perceived need for a perfect looking and fully stocked at all times buffet inevitably results in waste.

The chef noted that hotels place notices in guests’ rooms requesting them to re-use their towels if they do not require washing. Similar notices ask guests to be mindful of their water consumption and to turn off taps in between rinses while brushing their teeth.

Fearnley-Whittingstall called for hotels to extend this approach to food, telling their guests, “If you get down at 09:00 you will see a diminishing buffet because we care.”

Any initiative in the fight against the staggering amounts of food waste we are seeing is a welcome one, and the environmental measures already taken by hotels, mentioned above, have been implemented with success far and wide.

What do you think? Is it feasible to approach food waste in this way, or will paying customers exercise rights to a full buffet regardless of the time they visit? Have your say below.