Sustainable Catering

Sustainability as a concept is really about survival. Simply put, it’s about finding the belief, tools and actions that allow for us to continue to exist as a species. It’s like we’ve journeyed so far in the wrong direction, that we are now trying to find our way back to a place we had long since past. It seems to me that our communities had to have been sustainable at one time.
As for our journey to sustainability as an organization, we quickly learned that it was about making better choices. Some of these choices were easy as they required slight adjustments in behaviour. Other choices prove harder to make as they directly impact our bottom line.  Joining GreenTable really got our sustainability program rolling as it gave us a framework in which to work. Following our assessment, we implemented all of the recommendations available to us. These included the three areas of electrical consumption, water use, and waste management.

Waste Management
Waste management was the initial “hard decision” we set out to solve as we knew it would definitely impact our bottom line. As you might suspect, food waste is an endemic problem in our industry. Through GreenTable we became aware of the composting services of Smithrite and immediately signed on. Our next challenge was getting our staff to change their behaviour, and to our complete surprise, they did so almost overnight. I can say with pride that we’re fully composting all of our organic waste. We’ve reduced our garbage to one bag every four days, and compostable waste is picked up three times a week. We have corporate clients that save their used bamboo cutlery and paper plates for us to dispose of, and we even have staff bringing their recycling from home!

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