FiturNext 2025: how tourism can contribute to sustainable food management
By Sandra Campos, Consultant specialized in tourism, and Pako Rodríguez, Head of Tourism area.
(Originally published in Spanish)
Do you know the impact of the tourism sector on food? Do you know good practices that contribute to sustainability? We are launching the FiturNext 2025 Challenge, dedicated to how tourism can contribute to sustainable food management. Don't miss all the details of this next call.
What is food surplus?
Before we start, let's talk about terms. At the FiturNext Observatory and Ideas for Change, we adopt a proactive stance of innovation and positive terminology. For this reason, we propose to talk about ‘surplus’ rather than ‘waste’, as the latter term can lead to considering any surplus as waste, exhausting the possibilities of alternative uses for the waste generated. Adopting a ‘surplus’ approach adds an alternative value related to circularity opportunities or any other form of utilisation.
On this basis, we can define food surplus as the waste of agricultural and food products that are still perfectly edible and suitable for human consumption and which, in the absence of alternative uses, end up being discarded as waste (1). This surplus is generated worldwide and at all stages of the food chain, which has led to it becoming a major global issue.
Indeed, target 12.3 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals states:
“By 2030, halve the global per capita food surplus at retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses in the production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses (2).”
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), one third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted every year. This is the equivalent of 1.3 billion tonnes (3), around 180,000 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower. In fact, it is estimated that 28% of the land used for agricultural production worldwide is used to produce food that will never be consumed (4).
In addition, there is a geographical contrast in relation to food surplus: 14% of food is wasted at the harvesting, production and distribution stages, especially in developing countries. The remaining 17% is wasted at the consumption stage, mainly in developed countries. This contrast can be exemplified by the following data: per capita food losses, including pre-consumption stages in Europe and America are between 280-300 kg/year, while in Africa and Asia they are 120-170 kg/year. Consumer food losses range on average from 95 to 115 kg per person per year in Europe and the Americas, while this figure is lower in Africa and Asia, ranging from 6 to 11 kg per year per consumer (5).
In Spain alone in 2020, the seventh largest surplus food producer in the EU, 1,364 million food waste was discarded, an average of 31 kg per person (6).
Looking at future projections, food waste is expected to increase by 60% by 2030, resulting in a loss of more than 1.5 trillion dollars (7). In fact, it is estimated that feeding the world's population in 2050 would require increasing current food production by 75%, which in turn would increase the volume of surplus food (8).
The generation of surpluses that end up as waste generates an unsustainable triple impact at the global level:
Environmental impact: This food waste is responsible for 8% of global carbon emissions (9), which is an avoidable environmental cost.
Economic impact: global annual losses are estimated at around $940 billion.
Ethical and social impact: more than one trillion tonnes of food is thrown away each year while 1/9th of the world's population is undernourished (10).
Food surplus and tourism
Food surpluses can be aggravated by tourism: lack of process optimisation, irresponsible consumption or inadequate food preservation are the main causes of surpluses in the industry.
The proliferation of travel has contributed to an increase in food waste, as confirmed by industry data: according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), between 1.2 and 1.5 billion pieces of untouched food waste end up in landfills every year (11). Meanwhile, according to the Spanish Association of Commercial Coding (AECOC), the hospitality sector alone is responsible for 14% of the annual food surplus generated in Spain (12).
Such is the impact of tourism on food management that in 2022 UN Tourism (formerly UNWTO) launched the Global Roadmap for reducing food waste in the tourism sector, building on the Recommendations for the transition to a green travel and tourism economy (13).
After all of the above, it seems appropriate to state that tourism is an industry of great importance for reducing the food surplus, as well as for creating new opportunities as an alternative to food waste. This idea is the roadmap for the FiturNext Observatory's 2025 challenge.
How tourism can contribute to sustainable food management: FiturNext 2025 Challenge
FITUR's Observatory of good practices in terms of tourism sustainability, whose objective is to identify, promote and distinguish projects at a global level with a positive impact on the tourism sector, is focusing in its fifth edition on the sustainability of food management in tourism, as well as in its cross-cutting sectors.
From a regenerative perspective, the new edition seeks to reward those good practices that offer the reduction or generation of new possibilities for the use of excess food along the entire tourism food chain.
Entitled How can tourism contribute to sustainable food management? this new edition is structured in three impact categories:
Destinations and other territories: Aimed at those territorial administrative bodies that have focused their efforts on improving food management in the tourism sector.
Horeca and transport sector: Aimed at organisations of any kind in the hotel, catering, cafeteria and transport subsectors that have implemented food management optimisation measures.
Other agents in the food value chain: Aimed at all cross-cutting agents in the tourism food chain that promote good practices in food sustainability.
Call FiturNext 2025
You can now register your initiative focused on sustainable food management. The registration period will be open from 1 March to 31 August 2024.
The projects that make it to the final will participate in the activities that will take place at our stand at FITUR 2025 and subsequent actions and will benefit from the visibility provided by being part of the FiturNext community thanks to its impact on the media and the synergies created among its participants.
1-AESAN - Agencia Española de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición. (s. f.). Desperdicio alimentario https://www.aesan.gob.es/AECOSAN/web/para_el_consumidor/ampliacion/desperdicios.htm#:~:text=Existen%20diferentes%20definiciones%2C%20pero%20de,falta%20de%20posibles%20usos%20alternativos%2C
2- Organización de las Naciones Unidas, (s.f.).Objetivo 12. Consumo y producción sostenibles - Objetivos de desarrollo sostenible. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/es/sustainable-consumption-production/
3- Food and Agriculture Organization os the United Nations, (s.f). Food loss and waste https://www.fao.org/policy-support/policy-themes/food-loss-food-waste/es/
4-Hosteltur, (2020). Hoteles y startups, mano a mano para reducir el desperdicio alimentario. https://www.hosteltur.com/133622_hoteles-y-startups-mano-a-mano-para-reducir-el-desperdicio-alimentario.html
5- Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura, (2011). Pérdidas y desperdicio de alimentos en el mundo. https://www.fao.org/3/i2697s/i2697s.pdf
6- Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación del Gobierno de España, (2022). El Gobierno aprueba una ley pionera contra el desperdicio alimentario para su tramitación parlamentaria. https://www.mapa.gob.es/es/prensa/ultimas-noticias/el-gobierno-aprueba-una-ley-pionera-contra-el-desperdicio-alimentario-para-su-tramitaci%C3%B3n-parlamentaria/tcm:30-620817
7- Grupo Consultor Boston, (2018). Abordar la crisis de pérdida y desperdicio de alimentos de 1.600 millones de toneladas
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/tackling-1.6-billion-ton-food-loss-and-waste-crisis
8- Hosteltur, (2020). Hoteles y startups, mano a mano para reducir el desperdicio alimentario. https://www.hosteltur.com/133622_hoteles-y-startups-mano-a-mano-para-reducir-el-desperdicio-alimentario.html
9- Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), (2019). ¿Por qué los desperdicios de alimentos deberían importarle al sector turismo?
10- Asociación Empresarial Hostelera de Benidorm, Costa Blanca y Comunidad Valenciana, (2019). Guía para la lucha contra los desperdicios alimentarios en hoteles vacacionales de la Comunidad Valenciana. https://www.turismecv.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Gu%C3%ADa-para-la-lucha-contra-los-desperdicios-en-los-hoteles.pdf
11- International Air Transport Association (IATA), (2023). Sustainable Cabin: Cabin Waste and Single Use Plastics https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/pressroom/fact-sheets/fact-sheet---cabin-waste/
12- Hosteltur, (2020). Hoteles y startups, mano a mano para reducir el desperdicio alimentario
13- ONU Turismo, (s.f.). Hoja de ruta mundial para la reducción del desperdicio de alimentos en el sector turístico. https://www.unwto.org/es/desarrollo-sostenible/reduccion-del-desperdicio-de-alimentos-en-el-sector-turistico
