THAI Airways International and Thai Smile have launched food waste management project Save Food Save the World, which is designed to minimise waste in food production.
In collaboration with Food Innopolis and the National Science and Technology Development Agency, the program has been initiated by the Thailand Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MSHDS) and will see the airlines’ catering reduce food and cabin waste, and environmental impact.
In the first year of the project, Thai Airways will focus on reassessing the food manufacturing process and supply chain, beginning from ingredient procurement, catering food production, menu planning, packing and loading, while MSHDS will study ingredients used by the airline to identify technologies that can reduce food waste during meal production.
Thai will also enhance effective resource management, estimating a reduction of 400 kilograms of food waste per day, saving approximately 20 million baht (A$955,153), and reducing its food waste by approximately 3% year-on-year.
Meanwhile, Thai Smile will aim to reduce its food waste by 16.5 tonnes per year, made up of 10.8 tonnes from international flights and 5.7 tonnes from domestic flights — the equivalent of 100,000 per year.
The efforts align with the Tourism Authority of Thailand’s focusing of strategies on responsible tourism, with Thai aiming to become a “sustainable airline” by 2023.
Recent studies have placed the country’s food wastage as accounting for 33-50% of all solid waste.
