The Green Key awarded Hostel De Draecke in the city of Gent uses a local group on Facebook to reduce food waste
Hostel De Draecke is working with sustainability in many aspects such as recycling of furniture and waste material, and the hostel is also actively fighting to reduce food waste. The kitchen at the hostel is in charge of breakfast, lunch packages and dinners for its guests, and it carefully tries to prepare food according to the orders in order to reduce food waste, but it still happens from time to time that some bread or other food items are left unused.
As the surplus food varies from day to day, the hostel has taken an innovative solution in use: Through a local Facebook group, the hostel announces when it has surplus food, and local organisations or student groups are coming to pick up the food so that it is not wasted. If the hostel has other types of waste, such as empty and cleaned food plastic containers or glass jars, this is also advertised on the Facebook group and picked up by locals needing the material.
One of the receivers of the surplus food waste from Hostel De Draecke is the organisation ‘Let’s save food Gent’. Filip François from the initiative explains: “Our first goal is to fight food waste and climate change because human people are destroying the earth. The fight against climate change and poverty is one fight.”
”We believe in recycling and reuse of material and left-over food to the largest extent possible, and we are happy that we found a way to ensure that surplus food is eaten by local people in need of it,” says Sara Geysels, Manager at Hostel De Draecke.
