'eeco' Initiative

A Three Course Meal of Food for Thought

Food and the environment- two topics which were once the reserve of health conscious young professionals, fodder for the Times’ Sunday supplement and subject to many a Panorama report. Yet the social and environmental implications of buying a £2 Tesco’s chicken are now pondered by a much wider audience, and chances are they include your clients -current and future!

As the gradual progression towards legislation on environmental issues gathers pace, it is worth any business working with or within the catering industry to take a look at what is being said, and asses where they stand on the issue of sustainability. But with every other day turning out a new definition of what is ‘ethical’ and what will see palm trees on the polar caps before you can say free-range organic fair-trade chicken ….where do you start?

After years of trying to digest organic and ethical information, fed to me through seminars, news articles and general conversation tip bits -I have whittled down what I believe should be the three course minimum to be considered when it comes to sustainability as ‘food for thought’.

First Course: Going Local.
Nowhere are the two issues of food and the environment more closely linked than when it comes to ‘food miles’. While the Homer Simpson in me pictures a lollipop fringed road of chocolate stretching off into the distance; food miles are actually the cause of much concern and considerable environmental impact. The distance a strawberry travels between being plucked from the ground and dunked in chocolate at an event has a significant affect on the carbon footprint, especially if it comes from Argentina!

Going local not only reduces the carbon footprint but helps support local producers too, so is good for the economy. With tighter employment laws in the UK, you can also be fairly sure nobody is being exploited –so everybody wins! Yet there are a few issues to be raised... For example; what actually denotes ‘local’? and how do you get strawberries grown locally to London in March?

The boundaries that people use to define ‘local’ vary wildly. Some will say within twenty miles, some within a hundred and some define it by region. However, I believe it is best not to quantify. Instead; start at the doorstep, sourcing all you can from there, then move to the county you’re in, then region, then country and so on. While it may be slightly far fetched to consider Scotland local to London, if you’re buying salmon it’s a whole lot closer than Canada.

A more ‘sustainably’ sound solution, and one that answers my second question, is to follow local produce by season; strawberries in spring, blackberries in the autumn, a reserve in the winter. There’s a huge variety of food that can be sourced year round from the UK, and a good chef will know how to make the most it. The food will be of a higher quality and could lead to some truly unique (and delicious) menus.

Second Course: Buying Fair Trade.
In some instances there is simply no choice other than to buy from abroad. Global warming withstanding, you’re more likely to find George Bush on a yoga retreat in Afghanistan than a coffee farm in the Home Counties. In such cases buying Fairtrade is a safe way of ensuring your produce is ethically sourced, with farmers and manufacturers receiving a fair price and workers given fair conditions. It does not guarantee that the produce will be more environmentally sound, but it can be noted that (in general) the smaller producers, such as farmers, practice more sustainable techniques which are less harmful to the environment than those of large scale producers. It is also worth noting that while I have used Coffee as my principle example here, you can now buy everything from fruit to footballs with the Fairtrade stamp. 

Third Course: Recycling Waste.
The party is over and the immaculate spread you put on is, well, still immaculate as nobody has dared to touch it. In the mad rush to tidy everything up and get home before midnight the whole lot is dumped in the bin and thrown out with the rest of the rubbish –it happens everyday. Apart from there being a certain tragedy to the sight of delicately prepared canapés finding the end of the road squashed up with banana skins in a black plastic bag; it is also highly unresourceful. Due to health and safety, re-consumption may not be advisable, but all those proteins and nutrients will make good sustenance for plants and worms as (wait for it) …compost!

 Many restaurants are now going down the composting route, either installing their own composters or paying someone else to do it for them. The ExCeL Center Is one example of a purely event orientated venue which has also gone down this route, and may even see income from its very own line of ex-posh-canapé plant food in the not too distant future!

There are, of course, many more factors to consider when it comes to being more sustainable, and as it is a topic which is felt so passionately about I’m sure there will be people who would have questions about some of the above. However, in my eyes this is what makes the topic so daunting. With no clear path to take and people, organizations, ‘experts’ and menagerie of others all saying different things, the average business that ‘just wants to try and be a bit greener’ is left confused, and in some cases put off. It has been my intention here to outline the most straight forward, easy to do and irrefutably more sustainable actions we can all take. So best luck with your quest to be better to the planet, I’ll leave desert to you!