Hotels, restaurants and food services have a vital role to play in reducing food loss and waste. This includes reviewing how they source produce, create menus, and manage leftovers and plate waste.

To ensure improvements in this area, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is bringing together public and private actors to undertake common actions. To this end, FAO, Metro Turkey (a subsidiary of METRO AG, a leading international wholesale company that specializes in supplying the needs of hotels, restaurants and caterers) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Turkey undertook to jointly address the issue of food loss and waste in Turkey’s hotel, restaurant, catering and hospitality sector.

By combining their expertise and efforts, FAO, the Ministry and Metro Turkey aim to develop guidance, checklists and tips for the food and hospitality sector, which businesses can follow to reduce food waste. The guidelines will include recommendations to prevent food wastage, as well as information on how to use unavoidable food surplus, such as donations to people in need, or the re-use of leftovers and/or non-edible food waste for other purposes (e.g. feed, recovery into energy through compost, etc.).

More information can be found here.