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The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is pleased to announce the release of a food waste report titled, “BUFFET: Building an Understanding For Food Excess in Tourism – A report on the state of the Asia Pacific hospitality and tourism industry’s relationship with food waste.” The report explores the current situation of food waste in the region by reviewing governmental, private sector, non-profit, and developmental initiatives geared towards tackling the issue. The announcement of the report was made by PATA CEO Dr. Mario Hardy during the PATA Annual Summit 2019 in Cebu, Philippines.

Building an Understanding For Food Excess in Tourism – A Report is the capstone to PATA’s BUFFETfood waste reduction initiative, which was developed in January 2018. The initiative centred on bringing together stakeholders, raising awareness, developing and sharing resources, and contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals by tackling the issue of food waste.

Dr. Hardy said, “It is my pleasure to share this inspiring and original paper on such an important issue within sustainable tourism. The benefits of doing something about food waste are clear – cutting food waste will boost your triple bottom line and will have a massive effect down the supply chain. This report gives hope that we can prevent climate catastrophe if and when more tourism businesses can take actions such as implementing food waste prevention and reduction techniques.”

This report follows on other campaign initiatives including the “BUFFET for Youth” component, which challenged young tourism professionals to reduce food waste on their university campuses, and the launch of the BUFFET toolkit. This report is available for download at no cost via the PATA Store at the following link: https://pata.org/store/publications/pata-buffet/.

Every year around the globe, 1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted (FAO, 2019). That is one-third of all food produced for human consumption. As the tourism industry is one of the largest economic sectors globally, generating 10.4% of world GDP (WTTC, 2019), it is the responsibility of our industry to take action. Building an Understanding For Food Excess in Tourism – A Report evaluates the potential for the hospitality and tourism industry to step up and do their part to control and minimize food waste at all stages from supply and inventory to preparation and service.