Hilton, the UN Environment Programme for West Asia, and Winnow joined forces this year for the Green Ramadan Campaign to cut food waste. This collaboration built on the 2023 campaign, which resulted in a 60 per cent reduction in food waste across three hotels.
This year, the programme was scaled across 32 hotels in seven countries, serving 239,000 guests during iftars and suhoors.
Participating hotels across Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Turkey, and Malaysia underwent “extensive” sustainability training, with a focus on:
- Local sourcing,
- Sustainable gastronomy,
- Forensic waste management with Winnow’s AI and
- Diversion by donation and composting.
During the Green Ramadan Campaign, a number of interventions were implemented in the hotels. This included employing emotive guest messaging, serving smaller portions, providing live cooking stations, concentrating on reduced food displays, and switching to à la carte menus.
As a result of these strategies, the partners shared that food waste was reduced by a further 21 per cent over the 61 per cent of Green Ramadan 2023.
According to Winnow, this is the equivalent of avoiding more than 1.7 tonnes of food waste, enough to provide 4,300 meals.
Overall, this resulted in 7.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions prevented.
Analysis showed that the most frequently wasted items included bread and pastry, vegetables, and meats.