Lime Venue Portfolio (LVP) – which has multiple venues across the North and Scotland – in conjunction with Foodsteps, has recently introduced carbon labelling onto its food menus. Sales Director of LVP and Conference and Events Sustainability Lead at Compass Group UK&I, Jo Austin, tells us all about the initiative.
Carbon labelling works in a similar way to the government scheme that requires a calorie count on menus – only instead of showing nutritional information, it highlights a dish’s environmental impact, as Jo explains: “Carbon labelling is the measuring of carbon emissions that are generated by creating a dish, covering the whole life cycle of a product from farm and processing to transport and food waste. The objective of this is to educate and enable event organisers and delegates to make informed decisions about the food they’re consuming.”
“When we speak to clients, we now talk to them about menu engineering and how they can make better choices for their delegates and therefore for the event. Food is a huge part of the carbon impact of an event; most people only tend to think about travel but not everybody travels hundreds of miles for an event: everyone eats! In terms of greenhouse gas emissions globally, after energy, food is the second largest contributor so we’re extremely passionate about bringing this education to the forefront of the industry.”
Each dish on a carbon labelled menu will be given a rating from A to E, A being a high carbon intensive dish and E being low, each represented by a traffic light colour system: “An A dish will generally incorporate red meat, particularly beef, and dairy cheese. Some of the lowest carbon foods are vegetables and legumes and as we banned air freight in most of our businesses, these ingredients must be seasonal and locally grown which lowers the carbon impact of a dish even further.”
Jo and the LVP team recognise that not everybody wants an event menu that’s just vegetables; by making some small adjustments to existing dishes, they can lower carbon impact without changing it completely: “Through our culinary team’s menu engineering, we’ve adopted a plant forward approach to our dishes rather than a completely plant based one. For example, our 50/50 burger is 50% beef and 50% plant protein, so the carbon footprint is significantly different – and it’s still yummy!”
“Being plant forward as opposed to plant based not only enables customers to make better decisions, but it also means that allergens are taken care of. Dairy, for example, is one of the biggest allergens around but by making our desserts dairy free, we’re eliminating this – carbon labelling is a 360 approach to food as a whole, not just the environmental impact.”
Sustainable events are something that all event profs want, but Jo believes that events still have a long way to go to be as sustainable as they can be: “Carbon has a long-term cost, it’s just that currently, we’re not recognising where that cost sits. Until there’s some governance where organisations must demonstrate how they’re going to decarbonise, lowering our carbon footprints is going to be a challenge because people still think they can get away with not doing it. Our role as businesses at moment is to be the best we can possibly be so that when we get to the point of governance, carbon offsetting will cost less.”
Jo offers her advice for organisers conscious about their food carbon footprint: “Choose your partners wisely. If there’s no verification and people can’t share the life cycle analysis of the dishes being provided, it probably means it isn’t great for the environment.
“Food waste is another issue; if global food waste was a country, it would be the third biggest one in the world. If you’re not factoring food waste into your sustainability plan and carbon measurement, you’re missing half of the issue. We need to start addressing not just about what we’re buying and serving but what we’re getting rid of.”