Sunway Resort Hotel and Spa has cemented the promise to tackle the serious problem of food waste generated by high service businesses with the installation of a permanent on-site compost machine!

In line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the #sunwayforgood movement, the compost machine will collect and convert food waste from three major clusters of Sunway City. Including Sunway Pyramid Hotel and Sunway Clio Hotel, over 15,000 litres of food waste has been converted into compost since July 2019, and a projected 50,000 litres is expected for the end of 2020.

“At Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa, sustainability is an integral component in our business framework and we believe that all of us are responsible to stop wastage. We are committed towards a sustainable environment, economy and society and with this endeavour, it is also imperative for us that awareness through education is conducted when it comes to creating sustainable change within the community.”

said Alex Castaldi, Senior General Manager of Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa.

As of current usage, the final product of composted waste is being used as soil conditioners around Sunway City’s landscape, fertilising the earth prior to planting. Sunway Resort Hotel and Spa also conducts information sharing and site-visit sessions targeted at youth and student groups on the practices of hotel’s food waste composting.

An estimated 16,000 tonnes of food waste is contributed to by Malaysians daily, enough for 12 million people to have three meals a day. These figures worsen during the festive season with a spike by 15 to 20 percent. The compost machines by Mentari Alam EKO (M) Sdn Bhd, or MAEKO’s food waste composting machines are designed to reduce these figures by up to 80%.

By controlling factors such as temperatures, agitation, and airflow, and with the help of a specially designed crusher unit, the usually long composting process is cut down to a mere 24 hour duration. The unit also has ventilation features of a bio-enzyme filtration system to eliminate unpleasant smells from the degrading of natural produce.

Sunway Hotels and Resorts also champions the Hospitality Group’s on-going #ZeroFoodWastage programme, where an initiative of surplus food from food and beverage establishments is collected and redistributed to the urban poor.

Not only that, the Group’s Soapful project also collects and repurposes used soap bars from hotels to be distributed to beneficiaries for personal use, as well as to be sold by respective social enterprise programmes at charity sales and other social community markets.

True to the zero waste agenda, a FatHopes Energy partnership is also underway. Used cooking oil from hotels is collected and recycled into biodiesel! Other sustainable initiatives also include Kloth Cares, a Malaysian social entrepreneurship dedicated to reducing fabric out of landfills.

Through no-straw campaigns, single-use plastic reduction, and the many others aforementioned above, Sunway Group’s mission to contribute to the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development agenda is hopefully the push we collectively need to hop aboard the bandwagon to save our environment and the world.

Visit http://www.sunwayforgood.com for more information on each programme.