Right now running a profitable business and running a sustainable business seem at odds with each other. Sustainable decisions are almost inevitably more expensive than non-sustainable ones. So if sustainability is close to your heart how can you run a business and be sustainable at the same time?

Should I sell meat?

Honestly, no. If you wanted to be the most sustainable option the answer is most likely that cutting out meat would make the biggest impact to your business than anything else. But meat sells, and people like meat, and not all meat is the same.

If your business is going to rely on meat then do some proper research into what you're getting and where it comes from. Getting it from a cash & carry where there is no real traceability in the supply chain is the worst thing you can do. But finding a butcher that you want to partner with, who shares the same values, and is willing to go that extra mile will massively soften the impact.

The Ethical Butcher

Speak to Farshad at the Ethical Butcher, and he'll point you in the right direction!

What packaging should I use?

Strap yourself in and get ready for a lesson in how hard it is to do this right. You might say that your packaging is recyclable, well for that to happen, everything in this chain has to go right. If one point in this chain breaks then it all goes into a big furnace. Pretty much every waste removal company talks about being zero-to-landfill, and that just means it's getting incinerated instead!

• You are using packaging that is actually recyclable (this could still mean plastic, but nothing like styrofoam)
• Your customer eats from the packaging and then cleans it (food waste makes recycling impossible)
• Your customer disposes of the packaging in the correct waste bin (dry recyclables)
• No other contaminant is put into the bin making your clean recyclable packaging usable again
• It's picked up by a waste contractor that works with that product and separates the different types of recyclable material in their facility
• A lot of that recyclable material is bundled up and delivered to a factory that turns that product into a useable end product

Unless you can really control the waste streams, generally if it's a street food market it's really hard to, you can't control whether something can get recycled or not.

So the responsibility is on you and your customer to limit the amount of disposable packaging that you use. Encourage customers to bring their own container and join our #PactLunch campaign!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwopV3AFnVo/

What else can I do?

The Sustainable Restaurant Association is a great resource of information about what you could be doing to make your business more sustainable. They have a self-assessment tool that you can fill out to see exactly what you could do.

The Food Made Good 50 Self-assessment Tool | Food Made Good UK

Why bother?