THUS SAVING ABOUT 55,000 TRASH BAGS ANNUALLY
Grand Hyatt Singapore, with a team led by Executive Chef Lucas Glanville, is moving a mountain of food waste…from landfill to garden fertilizer. Chefs preparing meals and back of house staff operating the dishwashers now dispose of 1000 kg of waste food per day into MEIKO WasteStar vacuum waste inlets, instead of traditional waste bins, thus saving about 55,000 trash bags annually.
The inlets suck the food waste, including fish skins, fat and meat bones, into a centralized MEIKO WasteStar grinder and dewatering unit that turns all waste into pulp and then reduces the water content by 50 per cent. Exiting the MEIKO WasteStar, the food pulp is further reduced in weight and turned into pathogen-free organic fertilizer in less than 24-hours by a ‘Rapid Thermophilic Digestion System’, invented by Singapore-based Biomax Technologies Pte Ltd.
The whole process effectively reduces 1000 kg of food waste to 250 kg of organic fertilizer,
which is then used on the hotel’s extensive grounds, including the rooftop herb garden, with any excess sold to local garden centres.
Grand Hyatt Singapore received a grant of US $250,000 through the 3R (Reduce, Reuse & Recycle) Fund for the installation and implementation of the food waste system. The 3R Fund, created by Singapore’s National Environmental Agency, is a co-funding scheme to encourage organisations to undertake waste minimization and recycling projects.
"We are keeping 400 tonnes of food waste out of landfill annually. I believe this is what hotels and chefs should be doing."
Executive Chef Lucas Glanville also said: “The new system has removed the manual chore of moving food waste around the hotel. There is a huge boost for hygiene because there are less bins, less wheelie bins especially and the damage they cause back of house. The system has made our staff so much more productive, for example, we no longer need to spend so much time sanitizing the wheelie bins."
“MEIKO WasteStar ticked so many boxes...it is saving labour costs, saving on physical space, giving us economies of scale and we are causing less trucks to be on the road. Grand Hyatt Singapore is just one hotel and the food waste situation in the hospitality world is a huge underlying issue. No one really talks about their back of house operations, but we are all stewards of the environment and using technology to make a better world is an easy choice for us."
“We are a large user of MEIKO for dishwashing and have been very happy and very impressed with their product and service over the years. We are using less water, energy and chemicals and this is something very important to be able to achieve."
“MEIKO worked to fit our budgets and made the system affordable and achievable.”
