You know the old joke about buses? You wait ages for one and then three come along all at once. It’s a bit like that with restaurant food waste. The average UK restaurant throws out 21 tonnes of food every year. That’s the weight of three double-decker buses. Perhaps even more shockingly, almost a third of that - almost seven tonnes - is waste swept off diners’ plates into the bin. Together, UK restaurants produce 600,000t of food waste a year.
The figures surprised us when we conducted our survey in 10 London restaurants last year. Restaurants have been slow to embrace sustainability, many for understandable reasons. It’s easy for busy restaurateurs, however well intentioned, to feel overburdened. Sustainability can appear like a huge chunk of work, but there are some things, especially reducing and then disposing of food waste, that need effort and have considerable rewards.
Our study also shows how introducing a range of straightforward back of house measures could reduce the amount of food that restaurants waste by 20 per cent - or four tonnes per restaurant. Taking into account the cost of the food, labour, waste management and landfill tax, as well as opportunity costs, restaurants implementing these changes could save themselves £2,000-4,000. It should be a no-brainer. No chef worthy of the name should want to see good food going to waste. Similarly, seen from the consumer point of view, if you’ve paid good money for a meal - the average dinner for two in London now costs £90 - it sticks in the throat knowing the sheer scale of waste.
So part of our solution is waking consumers up to the issue and offering them a stake in it. They do bear some of the responsibility. The old adage “eyes bigger than your tummy” immediately springs to mind. But as our consumer research in April this year showed, the vast majority of diners have no idea about the scale of the problem.
Whether it’s natural British reticence or an aversion for all things American, half of consumers also told us that they were either too embarrassed to ask to take home leftovers or thought restaurants weren’t allowed to let you.
So armed with the information about the scale of waste and consumer attitudes towards it, we hatched a plan and Too Good To Waste was born. The campaign aims to raise customer awareness, empower them to ask to take home leftovers and help restaurants with back of house measures.
The vehicle is the humble doggy box. We knew from the off that our biodegradable, recyclable cardboard container wouldn’t solve the problem on its own but we reckoned that supplying 25,000 of them to participating restaurants would help. And 3663 and One Water agreed, sponsoring the box. Almost 100 London restaurants have signed up so far and we’ll be rolling out the campaign next year.
Mark Linehan is managing director of not-for-profit organisation the Sustainable Restaurant Association
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