Cruise lines can cut the volume of food waste they carry and offload by between 70% and 93%, according to Hungry Giant Waste Systems, and several major brands have already installed the Austin-based company's dehydration technology across entire fleets.

Founder and chief executive Chris O'Brien said the systems are operational on many vessels and delivering measurable returns. "The company's systems are already running on many vessels, some major brands have our technology fleet wide, and they are seeing really strong ROI," O'Brien said.

The commercial case rests on regulation as much as sustainability. The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service treats waste from international voyages as "regulated garbage," which must be incinerated, sterilized or handled under strict protocols before it leaves a ship in a U.S. port. Every ton of food waste a ship can dehydrate at sea is a ton it does not have to offload, store and pay to process under that regime.

How does the technology differ from biodigesters?

Hungry Giant's equipment sits in a different lane from the biodigesters many cruise lines have traditionally used fleet wide. Digesters break food down with microorganisms and enzymes into a watery pulp discharged at sea as a liquid waste stream.

Hungry Giant's bio-dehydrators run the opposite process. They cook waste at temperatures above what any pathogen can survive, then extract water through a steam-and-condense process, producing a dry, biologically stable biomass rather than a liquid. That output can be stored, offloaded at port, turned into fertilizer or soil amendment, or in some cases burned for its energy value.

The product line has two components:

• "Chewie," a self-contained bio-grinder that grinds and dewaters food. Installed low in a ship, it can macerate waste into semi-dry pulp and connect to a vacuum transfer system moving material from as many as eight separate kitchen stations to one central collection point — a setup suited to mega-ships with galleys spread across multiple decks.
• Bio-dehydrators, which accept whole food or ground pulp and deliver the 70–93% volume reduction, leaving stabilized biomass ready for offload.

O'Brien said some operators combine both systems to raise throughput and reduce offloads and discharge. "The combination of our two machines are also great for retrofits," he said, noting smaller operations can sometimes skip the grinder and feed waste directly into a dehydrator.

Why retrofits dominate the install base?

Retrofitting existing ships accounts for roughly 90% of Hungry Giant's current cruise installations, according to O'Brien. Larger vessels take on multiple grinders and dehydrator models typically rated at 700lbs or larger, placed in lower decks or galleys; smaller ships use smaller units from a range sized to different waste volumes.

The company runs the whole job in-house. It sends its own survey crew to assess the space and its own installation team to unpack, weld and plumb in the units, then trains existing ship's crew — recycling staff, engineers or galley personnel — to operate the equipment. No specialized hires are needed on the cruise line's side.

Machines log throughput data and status to a cloud portal, giving operators a verifiable record of how much waste they process — data that feeds directly into line-side sustainability reporting.

Where did the company come from?

O'Brien entered waste management from an unlikely start: a retail job in Sydney in the mid-2000s, where he saw how much styrofoam packaging went straight into the trash after deliveries were unpacked. He built a machine to crush and compact that material at the source, patented it, and spent years building and selling businesses in Australia's waste and recycling industry before relocating to Austin in 2018.

He then moved into the larger food waste market, with technology that originated in South Korea, and built the cruise business on the same premise: most food waste is majority water, so driving out the moisture leaves a fraction of the original volume in a form that will not rot, smell or attract pests.

O'Brien said initial talks are ongoing with other major cruise brands, and the company is pushing into smaller river vessels, where the appeal is volume reduction rather than cutting regulated garbage offloads.