Sapling, The Food Waste Project, and Livelyhood Pubs
At Sapling we are committed to leading the way towards a more sustainable drinks industry. This means working closely with our partners to help their business with its sustainability targets.
As part of this we have teamed up with the Food Waste Project who help hospitality businesses to become zero waste.
In the UK we throw away 4.5 million tonnes of edible food waste each year. The government has committed to reducing food waste by 20% by 2025, and although it has fallen by 7% in the last three years, we still have a long way to go.
When we throw food in the bin it is easy to disregard the impact on the environment that it has. It is easy to think that because food can naturally decompose that it doesn’t have a large carbon footprint. But we often forget the process of getting the food onto our plates in the first place. Each piece of fruit or vegetable has used considerable water, energy, and transportation, often coming from the other side of the world, to then just end up in our bins.
The Food Waste Project help a hospitality business to audit their food waste, and to understand the costs associated with it and then improve their operational efficiency by putting in food waste prevention strategies. This not only helps the environment, but also their business to waste less money.
As a partner with The Food Waste Project we worked together with Livelyhood, a group of 6 fantastic neighbourhood pubs in South West London, who are committed to lowering their impact on the environment.
One way that Livelyhood do this is to reduce the miles that all of their produce has to travel, by favouring local suppliers. This not only helps to lower their carbon footprint, but also supports small local businesses, something which is increasingly important at this time.
But not just stopping there Livelyhood wanted to encourage drinkers to make a more sustainable choice when ordering at the bar. The biggest barrier to getting people to make a sustainable consumption choice is often that they don’t know how easy it can be. So we have tried to make it as fun and easy as possible for drinkers to make this switch. For one month early next year, for every Sapling drink purchased across all 6 pubs we will be planting one tree. Each drinker will get a unique number which allows them to track where their tree has been planted, so they can see the benefit their choice has made.
