The first time we carried out a similar investigation was almost three years ago and since then, questions about recycling and environmentally friendly efforts have been coming in with greater and greater frequency, resulting in no less than five QoDs on various aspects of the subject to date*:
7/23/05 –- the fate of food waste 12/3/05 –- "green" hotel rooms for allergy-sufferers 4/15/07 –- Las Vegas' pig farm 12/13/07 –- casino recycling policies 7/10/08 –- in-room energy-saving motion sensors
The "greening" of the hotel-casino industry has gathered some momentum over the past few years and it’s been three years since we really tackled the food-waste issue specifically in depth, so we figured it was time to revisit. Here’s what we found out:
Both the Harrah’s Group (Harrah’s, Rio, Caesars, Imperial Palace, Paris, Bally’s, Flamingo) and MGM Mirage (Mirage, TI, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Excalibur, Circus Circus, New York-New York, Monte Carlo) donate all their leftover food to be used as pig feed by R C Farms, the big pig farm in North Las Vegas. Collectively, it saves over 30 million pounds of food per year from going to landfill. Hard Rock and the former Aladdin also used to do this, but no one from the Rock got back to us to confirm if their recycling program is still in place and Planet Ho informed us that their policy now is to send any buffet food that has not been set out to the Employee Dining Room. Any left-over food that's already been put out in the buffet is now thrown away.
Properties in the Station Casinos group and Boyd Gaming’s Suncoast have their food waste converted into compost, which is then used as fertilizer. In fall 2007, the Suncoast signed a deal with a company called Renu Oil & Recycling, which set up shop at the property and has a dedicated staff of recyclers sorting all its waste for up to 12 hours daily. The initial impulse behind the move was asset recovery, as the property discovered it was costing a fortune to replace all the silverware, glassware, crockery, salt and pepper shakers, and other non-perishable items that were inadvertently ending up in the garbage. Since all the food waste had to be sorted through in order to find the discarded knives and forks, it was logical to start doing something practical with the leftovers, which are now mixed with paper to form the above-mentioned compost.
Like Stations and a number of other properties around town, Suncoast’s waste grease and oil are converted to bio-fuel, for which they receive credits. When they combine these with the money saved from the asset-recovery program, which costs around $5,000 per month, they’ve found that not only does going "green" not cost them, sometimes they actually make a modest profit on these programs. And their daily garbage-production rate has been reduced from seven trash compactors-worth a day down to two. A similar program has been introduced at the group’s Delta Down’s property in near Lake Charles, Louisiana, and they’re hoping to start rolling it out group-wide.
Not much leftover casino food can go to feed humans due to the numerous health codes that cover the preparation and transportation of prepared food. However, Silverton confirmed that its small amount of leftover food that’s still good goes to its Team Member dining room. Ditto the Tropicana, which sends the rest of its waste food to the pig farm.
We also put in a call to Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, with whom we spoke the first time we addressed this issue in 2005. When we talked to them then, Binion’s had recently been sold to Harrah’s and they confirmed that the property had donated to them all the leftover fresh and frozen produce in its kitchen when it closed –- a process they confirmed that’s been repeated by other casinos that have bitten the dust in the interim, although they couldn’t recall exactly which ones.
They receive numerous random food donations every week, not just from casinos, but from all kinds of of restaurants, markets, and fast-food outlets around town. One welcome windfall that sometimes comes their way from casinos is in the form of boxed lunches, should a convention or other catered event have excess. The nature of the packaging somehow exempts this type of meal from some of the restrictions that cover buffet and restaurant leftovers and means they can be donated with ease.
Albertson’s grocery stores have set up a program called "Fresh Rescue" here in town, by which each day Catholic Charities receives any produce that’s still within its sell-by cutoff date, but not for long enough to stay on the shelf (who buys milk that’s only guaranteed good for two days when the carton next to it is fine for another 10?). It means that instead of the staple canned goods that used to constitute the bulk of all food donations, now 130 families a week receive fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy products, baked goods, and deli meats from the charity.
In the course of our research the only property we found that has no food recycling or donation policy in place (at least none that any of the people in Food & Beverage that we spoke with knew of) was the Wynn.
*So great has the interest become that it’s prompting us to add a new "green" section to our Las Vegas Hotel Guide. We’re working on it right now and will let you know when it’s done and ready to launch.
