5 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR COMMERCIAL KITCHEN’S SUSTAINABILITY RIGHT NOW
Sustainability is something that affects everyone. Sustainability focuses not just on benefiting the environment, but your business too. We’ve listed five ways to make your business more sustainable.
1. DONATING YOUR EXCESS PRODUCT
While minimising excess product is great for your bottom line, it’s not possible to eliminate it entirely. Consider donating any food that might go to waste to a local charity. There’s a variety of great places that would be incredibly grateful for your extra support. Not to mention it makes your business look great too. Charities like OzHarvest or Foodbank provide amazing support for the community.
2. WATCH YOUR EQUIPMENT’S POWER
The easiest way to create a win-win for you and the environment is by finding the right times to switch off equipment. Operating two fryers might not be necessary when it’s quiet, how about switching one off? Or you could check if your equipment has a low power or idle mode. This will bring your electricity bill right back, and be better for the environment too.
3. CREATE SOME NATURAL AIR-FLOW
Instead of paying to operate fans or air conditioners, try and open up your venue to allow for natural air-flow. It won’t only cool the place down, but will create a better atmosphere too. Of course in winter you might want to do the opposite. This is a great way to cut right back on your power bills, while reducing emissions.
4. BRIGHTEN UP YOUR VENUE
Following on from the last point, natural lighting can bring those overheads down too. This might extend beyond just opening up your venue. You could consider colour choices, for example, white will brighten up the venue without lights. This is another opportunity for creativity to cut down power costs while benefiting the environment.
5. GET CLEVER WITH PACKAGING
Biodegradable packaging is a perfect start for this. But why stop there? You can get creative with this by looking at ways to reduce your packaging, or finding more reusable packaging to make it more consumer friendly. For more on packaging read up on our article about packaging.
The best way to approach sustainable problem solving is to be creative. Find out how Food Strategy can incorporate sustainability and ethics in designs.