Every airport has lots of restaurants, fast-food outlets and grab-and-go places, especially in an era where inflight meals are rare in economy. But the wide choice in the airport inevitably leads to lots of unsold leftovers, and typically, they’ve mostly been discarded.
But more recently, both humanitarian and environmental concerns have led to more and more surplus or short-dated food being donated to food banks—France has just made it mandatory for supermarkets—and many airports are joining the trend.
Denver just joined in after a 2-month pilot program that harvested nearly two tons of donations. It’s a joint effort of the airport, the food vendors, and even United Airlines, which lent the project large coolers for transport. Other airports with sizable programs include Portland, where over 120,000 meals have been collected and Seattle, where 155,000 pounds of food have been collected since 2006.
An article in USA Today points out that the concession operators in a number of airports have similar programs of their own, including HMSHost, which distributes excess food from 55 airports around the country.
Photo of airport food court: Vasenka Photography / Wikimedia
