Which challenges are involved?
Appèl is the caterer for the University of Twente; we use the FoodCity concept on the campus. This involves a combination of unique food stations that have their own character and food concept at each location. It gives you the feeling of a Foodtruck Festival with the accompanying street food dishes. We would like to walk you through the choices we made in our commitment to sustainability.
Dishes and cutlery: wash up or throw away?
Naturally, it should be easy to take street food to go, so that you are free to decide where and when you’d like to enjoy your meal or beverage. We offer washable dishes and cutlery. We use detergent with a low environmental impact and the UT dishwashers, which we use in an energy-conscious way, feature low energy and water consumption. If we also factor in raw materials and costs to replace non-recyclable dishes, this is not always the most sustainable option.
For guests who would like to consume their lunch at a later time, we had to look for disposables. This involved quite a lot of consideration: after all, it involves an increase in the waste stream. To limit the environmental impact of this, we intend to keep the impact of raw materials and production as low as possible and connect with the UT's recycling streams as much as possible.
An increasing amount of plastic is being recycled. Unfortunately, not all plastics are equally recyclable and are not (yet) collected separately everywhere. Fortunately, more attention is now focused on plastics that are released into the environment (Plastic Soup). For the cutlery, we therefore went in search of an alternative to the well-known white, plastic cutlery. We discovered a line of cutlery that is 100% compostable, looks good and is solid enough to be used multiple times. Unfortunately, the waste processor cannot compost bio-plastics (yet): the time it spends in the composting machine is insufficient. The solution? The cutlery is made from renewable resources, and less energy is used in its production. This includes the environmental gain compared to other plastic cutlery. There is a lot of research going on in the field of PLA recycling, which will hopefully soon close the circle completely.
The right packaging
For the coffee and soup cups, we already knew that (FSC) cardboard is the best option, but many of these cardboard cups have a plastic coating. After some searching, we found cups with a water-based coating and therefore 100% compostable. We are pleased that the supplier can also provide us with hamburger boxes, panini sleeves and bread trays of the same material. As the coating prevents it from getting overly soiled, it can be recycled with the paper stream. More information can be found at http://www.care4.earth.
The search for the right salad bowl was more difficult. We conducted several tests with a cardboard container, but this proved to leak over time. We chose a plastic salad bowl made of PET. Clear PET is, especially as a mono-material, easily recyclable.
We pack the sandwiches in a paper bag. In this way, we comply with hygiene regulations with as little environmental impact as possible. As it contains food residues, it is unfortunately not suitable for recycling.
The meal choice
Perhaps you've already noticed: on an increasing number of price lists, you'll find an image of a cow, chicken, pig, fish or a vegetarian logo. Food and drink account for 20 to 30 percent of our environmental impact, and the biggest impact can be made by consuming less meat, fish or other animal products. It's also better for your health. We ensure a sufficient range of sustainable products and the labels help you to make a choice. We have deliberately chosen not to make a separate section with vegetarian and vegan dishes with the aim of presenting these products to people who are not vegetarian or vegan. In the week of Sustainability Day, we organize an inspiration week (called Plant Power), where we let everyone experience delicious vegetarian dishes and the fact that animal ingredients are not always needed. After this week, we will continue to strive for a better balance between vegetable and animal proteins.
We also feature a wide range of products with quality marks, and we take food miles into account. We already avoid waste in our purchasing and planning, and we try to process food that is left over, taking hygiene regulations into account, of course.
To-do
We believe that we are on the right track, but we also realize that we still have a lot to do. We are, for example, working on an alternative to the bread bags: these are made of FSC paper, but with a plastic window, so that they cannot be recycled. We have also instructed suppliers to improve the sustainability of their packaging and to help us make the range of pre-packaged products more sustainable. To this end, we now often use recycled PET (rPET), but also combined materials that are not recyclable. Together with the UT, we are also looking at which waste can also be recycled in the restaurants, such as PMD.
And high on our list: communication! We want to give more insight into the choices we make, and we need the help of our guests to implement this successfully. The field of sustainability is highly dynamic, and there are always new insights. We use these insights to make FoodCity even more sustainable.