In 2017, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) partnered with the American Hotel & Lodging Association to study food waste reduction best practices in hotels. The organization then made free resources, checklists and training available to the hospitality industry.

The following spring, WWF expanded its HOTEL|KITCHEN program in Baltimore. Led by Dr. Aurora Dawn Benton, founder of Astrapto, a sustainability consulting and training firm for hospitality, travel and events, the initiative assessed the city’s food waste reduction and recovery programs.

“What went right in Baltimore was that the convention center was already so devoted to sustainability: They embraced all of the strategies, they were super transparent with their data, they were willing to innovate and they brought a lot of their staff into training,” Benton says.

“What went right in Baltimore was that the convention center was already so devoted to sustainability.”

“The convention center saw the opportunity to be thought leaders and to really raise the bar for all of hospitality in the Baltimore area, and that’s what’s happening: Some hotels are starting to implement these ideas. And that was World Wildlife Fund’s hope all along: to get a whole community, a whole city, behind this idea in the hospitality and event space, and move the needle across the board.”

Benton’s team has since helped WWF expand its program to New Orleans and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Certificate Program: Sustainable Event Strategist

“In each community there’s going to be a different set of stakeholders that might gravitate towards this, so you have to throw out a wide net and see who raises their hand,” she notes.

Astrapto then provides tools and content they helped develop, like the WWF’s HOTEL|KITCHEN website. Benton hopes these types of programs spark a shift in the way the hospitality industry plans food-based events, and encourages meeting planners to focus on F&B sustainability issues ranging from food waste reduction to buying local to being mindful about how food is displayed.

“When you’re on the buyer side, it’s easy to think, ‘Well, that’s the supplier’s job,’ but there’s so much opportunity to be thoughtful about what planners are ordering and why they’re ordering it, and having a dialogue with the supplier,” she says. “This way, when the heat of the moment comes and the show is happening, everybody can trust the intuition and all the advance planning.”