In the fight against food waste, helping ensure that food that is still perfectly fresh and tasty enough to be eaten doesn't end up in the rubbish bin is already a victory. But if that same food ends up feeding those who would not have been able to afford a meal otherwise, the gain is doubly successful.
Autogrill®'s North American arm, HMSHost Corporation, operates primarily in airport hubs across the US and Canada, and for more than a decade has worked towards the goal of having no good food prepared on the premises be unnecessarily wasted. Through a partnership with the Food Donation Connection, many of HMSHost’s salads, sandwiches, fresh fruit and desserts that remain unsold at the end of a working day are collected from more than 100 different HMSHost locations and delivered to local food banks, charities or homeless shelters.
n 2016, that meant a grand total of more than 3 million food items finding their way to those in need. This also means that the mass of leftovers ending up in landfills is hugely reduced – protecting the environment as well as saving businesses money that would have had to be spent on waste disposal. At Seattle‐Tacoma International Airport in Washington, even the food scraps that do have to be thrown away get recycled and made into compost – and so turn into eco-friendly fertilisers for healthy soils. Whether you're travelling from North Carolina's Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Salt Lake City International Airport in Utah, or airports in Memphis, Nashville, Dallas and many others, HMSHost's food that's left on the shelves after you've taken off has a longer journey ahead than just a short hop into the bin.
HMSHost International's activities at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, supports the organisation's 'Made Blue' funding projects that match each litre of water used in the airport's catering with a litre of clean drinking water created through initiatives in developing countries.
For HMSHost, it means its clean water pledge will provide enough clean drinking water in the outskirts of Bandung (Indonesia) as well as My Hoa (Vietnam), of healthy, hygienic living for as many as 5,000 families. [Source : Water for Life]