Food Waste Action Week 2023
in partnership with isla.
Food Waste Action Week (6-12th March) is a week-long campaign, chaired by Love Food Hate Waste. The aim is to shine the spotlight on food waste and how to reduce it through initiatives. With this in mind, Smart Group partnered with isla to inform our clients, fellow event profs and followers about our fight against food waste and the actions we're taking.
Good environmental practice is also good economic practice. That’s why in 2021 we became a member of isla – the event’s industry sustainability body.
To support Smart Group’s objectives of becoming carbon neutral by 2030 and net zero by 2050. To do this, the fundamental basis of our policy reduce, measure and offset.
We have recently undertaken training with isla to look at how we could achieve these aims. And naturally, as catering is such a large part of Smart Group, reducing food waste is one of our key focuses. There are two main areas when considering the reduction of our food waste, the pre and post-event activities.
During the planning process, we work with our clients to guide them through the planning to ensure we give our chefs enough time to prepare the correct amount of food. In the post-event process, we work with isla’s Trace platform which measures both food and carbon emissions and gives clients information, allowing them to work towards reducing carbon for future events.
Our tasting events are inevitable in the decision-making process. We actively ensure that any surplus food does go towards future events or is used in our staff meals.
We control our waste management through many initiatives as outlined by Alistair Riley, Head Chef. Menu design is key. We reliably source ingredients from trusted suppliers, always making sure they’re sustainable and they meet a certain criteria. We also exercise careful portion control and methodically follow recipes to ensure waste is minimised.
Smart Group use Chefs Eye to measure the food waste during and after the production of an event. We are delighted to say that in the 5 months since using the tool, we have reduced our overall food waste by 5%! Using Chefs Eye also allows us to inform clients to make educated decisions about their menu to make it more sustainable.
Upon receiving the data from Chefs Eye, post-event, we’re able to input this into Trace. Trace gives us the overall carbon footprint for that particular event.
But it doesn’t stop there, the food waste collected then goes through the process of anaerobic digestion, before being turned into a bio-fuel, which is green energy.
In addition, we donate any unopened surplus food to charities such as the Felix Project and Fare Share. Clients are also offered the chance to offset their carbon emissions through B1G1, A global giving movement.