FOOD & DRINK
CATERING FOR CHANGE
The awareness of sustainability and the effect of not adopting a sustainable strategy on the environment and the planet is no longer in dispute. Ruston Toms, Founding Director of Blue Apple Catering, takes us through some of ways his company is doing its bit.
Sustainability has risen rapidly up everyone’s agenda in the last few years - it certainly has within Blue Apple and amongst our clients. However, the more you analyse the subject of sustainability within the corporate catering environment the more you appreciate how incredibly complicated it is to solve. Whether it be single use plastics, segregation of waste for recycling, mitigating food waste or using less water and fossil fuels, the different areas require different approaches.
For example, most of the world’s food waste ends up in landfill, that emit methane which is 85 times more potent than carbon dioxide – a fact that is often overlooked. One third of all the food produced in the world is lost or wasted, and in the UK alone the food and drink sector wastes 10.2m tonnes each year. On average each household wastes at least £500 of food annually.
The awareness of sustainability and the effect of not adopting a sustainable strategy on the environment and the planet is no longer in dispute. In our experience our clients see it as moral imperative, with added financial benefits. In 2019, reducing the amount of single use plastics stole the sustainable limelight. However, in 2020 we expect to see a move towards a more holistic approach to sustainable initiatives.
In order to raise sustainability on the agenda within our business we have self-appointed Green Ambassadors. Each of our operations managers are Ambassadors along with members of our site-based teams. Their objective is to ensure that sustainable initiatives are being implemented and reported on. Plus, they engage our clients to bring them on message, so we work in partnership on sustainable objectives.
Some of our clients have excellent sustainable credentials, however some are not quite so good.
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Therefore, we find that the best strategy is to start from the bottom up. By raising awareness amongst our client’s employees via PoS materials and table talkers in the dining area this usually influences policy change at the top of the organisation, as they have to go with the majority view and don’t want to be seen to not be supporting the agenda. We find that Millennials and GenZ within our client’s workforce are particularly engaged with sustainable agendas and identify with the values of an organisation that recognises that it is an issue and needs to be addressed.
However, one area where we all fall down with regard to sustainability is waste stream management. We trust that after we have segregated our waste that it is collected by a responsible contractor or local authority and is either recycled or sent to be used to generate fuel/energy. We never see it again and assume that it’s being managed in a responsible way. However, the amount of household waste that was recycled in 2017 was 45.7%. The EU target is 50% by this year. The remainder goes to landfill sites. Two thirds of the plastic waste, which amounts to 105,000 tonnes, is exported, mainly to Malaysia. Dumping our rubbish on other countries doesn’t seem like a sustainable or ethical solution to me. Therefore, both on a commercial and private level there is a lot we could still be doing to eliminate and then reduce waste so that we don’t have to ‘export’ it to other countries.
To help Blue Apple support the argument of adopting a generic sustainable policy there’s nothing like hard facts. Therefore, we use various organisations like
www.wrap.org.uk and the Sustainable Restaurant Association,
www.thesra.org. They are a great source of advice and information for foodservice businesses.
www.blue-apple.co.uk/ twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
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