INGREDIENTS
Food comes from many plants, animals and minerals, and their carbon footprints vary widely. While our industry needs to balance these concerns with nutritious diets and guest satisfaction, we should be aware of how much our choices can contribute to or help reduce our carbon footprint. Opting for more plant-based proteins and moving toward regenerative agriculture practices are two effective ways to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Plant-based proteins from pulses require 20 times less land & emit 20 times less GHGs than beef (per gram of protein produced).1
PACKAGING AND MANUFACTURING
All parts of the life cycle need to be taken into account when determining your carbon footprint. For example, GHGs can be created by factories that process the ingredients or products you use, and emissions are also released during the production of cans, bottles, and other packaging— including the take-out containers you use.
TRANSPORTATION
Moving ingredients is a significant part of our industry’s carbon footprint. Transporting them great distances across land or sea burns fossil fuels which create emissions, and even local delivery to your customers creates GHGs.
STORAGE & PREPARATION
Freezing, cooling, cooking, baking…and don’t forget the constant ventilation! One look at your utility bills will reveal how much energy your business uses every day. Understanding the impact of these processes is a great incentive for saving energy.
WASTE
This is a surprisingly large contributor to GHG emissions due to the unnecessary emissions generated by waste involved in food production. While some of this waste comes from grocery stores and consumers, our industry adds to it substantially, so we owe it to the world to reduce our waste.
Food service was responsible for over 244 million tons of food waste in 20192.
Sources:
1 Ranganathan et al. (2016), Shifting Diets for a Sustainable Food Future
2 United Nations Environment Programme, Food Waste Index Report 2021
