AccorHotels partners with Too Good To Go in bid to reduce food waste

AccorHotels UK & Ireland has partnered with Too Good To Go, the world's largest online marketplace for surplus food, as part of its aim to reduce food waste by 30% by 2020.

In doing so, it has become the first hotel group to join the platform in the UK.

25 of the group's hotels across the UK has signed up to the platform since January in cities including London, Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh.

AccorHotels, Europe's largest hotelier by room number, has already partnered with Too Good To Go in other European countries which so far has saved 32,000 meals from going to waste across 208 hotels, which equates to around 65 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

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The partnership is the latest move as part of AccorHotels’ Planet 21 programme.

The scheme has set out a five-year sustainability programme whereby it aims to reduce its food waste and introduce 1,000 urban vegetable gardens in the group's properties.

On top of this, AccorHotels has also committed to discontinue using plastic straws in its managed hotel in the UK this June and aims to promote franchise partners to do the same at other properties.

The Too Good To Go app aims to connect restaurants, hotels and supermarkets and other food retailers who have excess food to consumers who can purchase it, reducing food waste

“Reducing food waste is one of the key focuses of our Planet21 sustainable development programme, and this partnership is a great way of contributing to this,” said Shane Munro, VP of Food & Beverage at AccorHotels UK & Ireland.

“It helps us to use surplus food from our restaurants in a productive way that helps people, minimises food waste, and allows us to increase our connection with the local communities that we work in. As we integrate more of our hotels and more consumers get to know about the service it will have a bigger and bigger impact.”

Jamie Crummie, co-founder of Too Good To Go, added: “AccorHotels is the first hotel group to partner with us in the UK and we are excited about the difference we can make to food waste in the hospitality industry.”