One of the problems with a blogging schedule is that you postpone the post until last minute and then you get sick. Or decide to watch Tatort. Or both.
A friend of mine is deeply involved in setting up a sustainability scheme for restaurants here in Belgium. One of her problems: Restaurants touch upon so many aspects of sustainability that it’s hard to decide where to focus. Local, seasonal or organic food? Consumption of energy and water? Recycling? Workers’ rights?
Her idea is to weigh the sustainability achievements of each restaurant and to distribute gold, silver or bronze marks depending on how well they scored. That, of course, raises new questions: What is more important – changing the lightbulbs or changing the menu? Cooking with ingredients from the farmers’ market or with those that carry ecolabels? And how do you verify each of these?
At a recent advisory group meeting for her project, the restaurant owners at the table adamantly made clear that whatever the scheme would look like, they would not be prepared able to take on any additional cost. They would already face too much competition, too many constraints. And under no circumstances would it be possible to compare one restaurant with the other! Too different their circumstances. Local food? While possible for a Belgian restaurant – close to an impossibility for the Italian. Organic? Too expensive, and often of too low quality. While they would be willing to start where they are, there was no way they were going to change their character or become the greenest of green.
While definitely polemic, the two were speaking honest concerns. The biggest challenge for my friend in this process is to honour the complexity of her chosen sector while keeping her messaging and claims truthful and simple. This challenge is familiar from the long-winded attempts to establish a label for sustainable tourism.
In my opinion, she has three options:
- Simplify Radically (or as the Heath Brothers would say: Shrink the Change). Instead of solving everything at once, focus on one or two high-leverage actions. Introduce a local food Wednesday (in addition to the already existing Veggie Donderdag). Introduce MSC-certified fish in Belgian restaurants (while phasing out the endangered ones at the same time). Have restaurants sign up to the 10:10 pledge (or rather 11:11 by now). Not everybody will go along, but those who do get an instant publicity fix (and the verification is easy).
- Focus on the Process. Find a group of restaurant owners who are willing to go through a (maybe year-long) process of making their restaurant more sustainable. Instead of certifying an end goal, talk about the journey (“We’re becoming greener”). An idea would be to limit the number of participating restaurants and focus on telling the story of their transformation (along the lines of the good old reality TV format or campaigns like Nine Lives).
- Get Serious.
A properAn internationally applicable ecolabel for restaurants would be a worldwide first (as far as I know). It might be worthwhile to dig into the science of sustainability interventions and convene a dialogue process with the restaurant business and other stakeholders to define principles and criteria that guide meaningful interventions and are relevant across contexts. This process might take time, but it will help to build the market and yield better criteria than anything one person could develop on the back of an envelop.
Whatever path this process takes, there’s so much potential. Many people would prefer a more sustainable restaurant to one that ignores the planet (as long as the food is still good). And those that come only come for the food might be inspired by the stylish sustainable interior design and the tasty creations from local varieties of vegetables. This could inspire a movement.
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Update
The US Green Restaurant Association has an established certification standard. UK readers might want to check out the new-ish Sustainable Restaurant Association.