Sustainable restaurants in Brighton and Hove
Sustainable restaurants in Brighton and Hove
James Joughin
Brighton and Hove is home to a vibrant and diverse food service industry, and this is one of the three main components of food-related emissions in the City. The others are domestic, and public and private establishments like the hospital or schools.
Restaurants Brighton currently list 240 establishments in their latest A-Z of restaurants, but if you include coffee shops, pop-ups, mobile units, takeaways and an array of unlicensed establishments, you might even exceed the 1,000 listed in TripAdvisor. Restaurant Brighton actually has 2,000 subscribers, with greater consumer reach and visibility beyond that.
We do not have data for how much of the food consumed in Brighton occurs within ‘food service’ settings but the ReLondon report (2021) estimates that 14% of the food consumed in London by volume occurs within restaurants, cafés and canteens. Perhaps we could assume some similar share here, not least given that Brighton averages 11 million visitors in a year (at a value of some £1.3bn in economic benefits and 23,000 local jobs).
Emissions from restaurant and café activities are associated with energy consumption in raw material acquisition, menu preparation, storage and lighting, and waste. The ReLondon report suggests restaurants are probably relatively wasteful as compared to the domestic situation. It estimates that some 75% of total food waste in food service is considered ‘edible’ and thus avoidable.
There would appear to be several leverage points here. Climate:Change recently ran a post by Ben Simanowitz on how local restaurants exhibit different levels of engagement with the ‘sustainability’ agenda so it is encouraging to be able to report a new local initiative, the Sustainable Restaurant Guide, even as these remain notoriously tough times for small businesses and restaurants in particular.
The Guide and the method behind it was created by a partnership including the University of Brighton, Restaurants Brighton, and the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership. It is an ambitious move to support restaurants committed to improving their sustainability and will function essentially as an accreditation scheme, issuing badges across three categories: Sustainability Explorer, Sustainability Leader, and Sustainability Champion. A restaurant will improve its rating according to the degree of engagement it makes in five key ‘sustainability’ areas: water usage; energy and gas supply; menu and food waste; waste reduction, materials and chemicals; and social sustainability.
Restaurants stepping up
Last week, as part of the unrolling of the scheme, the various partners held a workshop to move the process on a step. Taking place at Brighton’s Hotel du Vin and using their Brighton Sustainability Toolkit, which has already been accessed by over 1,000 people, the workshop was open, free to all local restaurants, and designed to equip participants with the tools to reduce their environmental impact.
Some thirty local venues were represented and together shared their very different stories. Redroaster, for example, talked about how it had slashed plastic waste by switching to bag-in-box systems for milk. Nostos had improved energy efficiency by switching from ice machines to freezers and Lost in the Lanes had improved staff retention and well-being with more flexible personnel scheduling. Staff from the University of Brighton, who have been closely involved with the design and roll out of the toolkit, were there with the proverbial arm around the shoulders.
One presentation addressed head on the issue of avoiding green-washing and making out that whatever you are doing is more than it really is. A key element here was being honest with customers, and conceding if necessary that this is far from an easy journey. Participants were asked to think critically about the very notions of sustainability and terms like ‘eco-friendly’, the latter essentially a meaningless term and a low bar in the current context. The organisers clearly appreciated that times are brutal for restaurants, but had no doubt that taking part in this process could significantly distinguish one good restaurant from another.
Ivanka Majic from Restaurants Brighton said: ’The response from local restaurants has been really positive. It’s inspiring to see their commitment to making sustainable changes, which we know requires real effort.’
And what of the carbon impacts?
These efforts are of course not going to bridge the Brighton emissions gap for restaurants, let alone for the food sector as a whole. When faced with the sheer enormity of the emission cuts necessary, even some of these early adopters are daunted. ‘How can we possibly cut our emissions by 90%?’ one participant asked? His restaurant was out in the country and everything connected with the business has to be driven in or out: all the materials, the staff, much of the waste and all the customers. His score against the key sustainability criteria was handicapped from the start. How could he hope to get a gold star? And it is obvious that in this environment, nobody wants the bronze. There is no easy answer to this yet, even as most of the city restaurants struggle too.
The sharp-eyed will notice that, despite all five areas of the Sustainability Toolkit being important indicators of sustainability, the carbon footprint itself is not explicitly listed. Arguably this is the most important driver of ‘sustainability’ but there is no doubt that tackling it directly is unnerving. It was therefore encouraging to see participants in this event being steered towards other processes which do offer some support for this (with funds from central government and Brighton Council), with help for businesses looking to establish their carbon footprint and to reduce it.
A few establishments are making progress regardless. The Wahaca chain shows carbon impacts for its individual menu items. According to Which, the company’s survey work showed 66% of respondents volunteering that carbon labelling had encouraged them to choose a lower carbon option.
An even more powerful move is that of the University of Sussex, which now has all the cafés on the Falmer campus show rated carbon footprints by menu item.
Items on the menu are rated A to E and are accompanied by a traffic light colour system for easy identification. An 'A' rating indicates a ‘very low’ carbon rating, while an 'E' indicates a ‘very high’ carbon intensity. The labels display the carbon footprint per kilogram of each item. It covers all emissions from the farm through processing, packaging, and transport, and on to waste disposal.
In order for us to meet Net Zero, our daily carbon allowance from food is 2.45 kg CO2e per person, much lower even than the daily average global diet of 6.13 kg CO2e per person. The menu in the café then tells us that choosing the 'A' label, with 0.19kg of carbon per serving, is the equivalent of charging your phone 24 times. Choosing an 'E' label item, on the other hand with 5.5kg of carbon, is akin to charging your phone 747 times. This is surely powerful and helpful information.
The scheme needs support
It was observed by participants at the sustainability workshop that it would be helpful if a more supportive environment could be established for those restaurants trying to improve their practice, putting in the effort, willing to take a risk or two. What might this involve? Could the regulatory authorities, principally the council in the Brighton and Hove context, provide some encouragement, perhaps using its carrot and stick powers, limited as they are? Could the council establish a clearer framework in which change can be pursued? Could the council provide more leadership? Dare one even ask if a supportive environment might not include incentives: discounts, training, and even some small subsidies?
These interesting developments link to another recent Climate:Change posting, this time on the issue of behaviour change among consumers. The bottom line is that restaurants which try to improve their practice need a reward for their efforts and the costs that they incur. In surveys, the public say they are supportive of moves towards sustainability but the jury is still out. Of course this is tempered in Brighton and Hove, first by the vagaries of the large tourist sector but also by the significant income disparities that exist in the town. The key question though remains: how can the restaurant-going demographic be persuaded to pay a little more to outlets that are trying to improve their practice?
People will say changes have to be ‘affordable to residents’ and of course they do - but planners still need to be thinking about the small nudges that could get more restaurants to change their practices at the same time as prodding customers to recognise this with their wallet.
In this context, surveys show restaurant customers are more likely to choose the vegetarian option when it is the default: they choose what they are offered. Apparently, if you put the vegetarian option as the first item on the menu, you find the selection of that item goes up measurably. We also know from piloting in Scotland that if restaurants provide an easy doggie bag service, waste will be reduced. What if small moves like these were supported by discounts on the licence fee or the council tax, or even made mandatory? The cost would be minimal, the publicity for the restaurant, and indeed the town, would be effective and there would be a noticeable impact.
Then, what about peer group pressure? Spreading the word among customers? Surely this could have some effect. If Brighton and Hove wants to be the ‘progressive beacon’ people often claim it is, we, the citizens, could go further: could discerning customers start to think about actively choosing places that are participating in the scheme? Some people might even consider only going to places that are demonstrably on the sustainability journey. A step too far? If we are to get to the emission reductions required there are probably going to be many steps too far.
James Joughin leads work on food for Climate:Change.
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