The race to carbon zero

Images of stranded starving polar bears, melting ice caps and uncontainable wildfires may seem a far cry from the reality of day-to-day hospitality operations in the UK.

Yet more and more leaders from within the sector and beyond are becoming alive to what is widely recognised as a global climate change emergency.

Indeed, the government recently announced new climate change commitments that will set the UK on course to cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035, and to reach net zero by 2050.

Buying green energy, training staff to turn lights and equipment off overnight, and separating waste are all relatively effective ways to reduce carbon footprints, and energy bill, and is something many operators have been doing for years.

But what comes next is much harder to achieve and likely to require significant investment.

“I don’t think the world realises how precarious the situation could be if we don’t do something about climate change,” says Stephen Packer, director of supply chain and IT at Pizza Hut Restaurants UK. While real change may cost time and money, he is clear that if businesses don’t start taking action then longer term “we are all going to be paying for it”.

“If we don’t find a way to reduce the impact of farming, for example, then it might be difficult for farmers to grow food in 10 years’ time. When all the places we buy our food from are three degrees Celsius hotter, and there is no water in the fields, it becomes a really pressing issue.” But Packer warns “the stuff that is really going to make a difference going forwards is going to be difficult and is going to cost money”.

The business has been striving to reduce its environmental impact for many years and been working with other operators more recently as part of industry group Zero Carbon Forum (ZCF). It has been set on the basis that a lot of the challenges the sector faces around this issue can only one solved if it works together.

It is looking to design and implement a net zero roadmap for hospitality, covering scope one, two and three emissions. Scope one emissions cover direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, scope two covers indirect emissions from purchased energy consumed by the business, such as heat and electricity, while scope three includes all other indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain – and it’s this area which is hardest to tackle.

“From the mapping that members have done of their footprint, in excess of 90% of total emissions as a business in hospitality can be from your supply chain,” explains Mark Chapman, founder of ZCF. “It’s a challenge because you are not fully in control of it. But you can influence it from the menu you offer and also the engagement that you have with your supply chain.”

To be published ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November, ZCF’s roadmap will define where the emission hotspots are for typical operators and look at what initiatives can be implemented both individually and collectively as a sector to reduce those emission areas.

The forum will also work with its members to produce individual company action plans. All members will understand what initiatives they can implement to reduce their emissions, what best practice looks like and how they compare to the industry average.

A green recovery

The sector has suffered a huge financial hit from the pandemic and Chapman is keen to promote the opportunity for a green recovery. For those operators that haven’t zeroed in on green initiatives previously, there are a whole host of low-cost actions that can be taken by operations, for example, making sure that kitchen extractor fans are switched off overnight could save £3,000 a year in extra energy costs and 10 tonnes of carbon emissions from being created.

Other initiatives include introducing electric vehicle charging points at sites. “There is an opportunity to capture those new 20-30-minute occasions, that didn’t use to exist, where people are stood charging their car,” says Chapman. “We are supporting members to roll out those charge points and collectively publicise them to consumers.”

The forum already counts some of the largest UK operators as members, including The Restaurant Group, Nando’s, Pizza Express, Marston’s, Burger King and Greene King, and is keen to work with more.

Nando’s announced last month that it was on track to achieve carbon neutral status across scope one, two and three emissions by November this year as part of its aim to become a net zero business by 2030. The business said that in addition to cutting its own emissions it was taking responsibility for those that can’t be avoided through carbon offsets which finance climate and development projects elsewhere. In this case, Nando’s homeland of South Africa and surrounding countries (Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi) that provide ingredients for its famous peri peri sauce.

The achievement of becoming a carbon neutral business builds on its existing science-based target of reducing the carbon footprint of the average Nando’s meal by almost 50% by 2030 – this is over and above the 40% reduction which has already been achieved since 2015.

Nando’s restaurants in England, Scotland and Wales are already supplied with 100% renewable electricity and gas, with Ireland set to follow. Other changes have included adding a greater number of plant-based dishes to the menu and working with suppliers, such as its chicken farmers, to reduce emissions in its supply chain.

Colin Hill, chief executive, Nando’s UK & Ireland says the business has made good progress over the past 10 years with the news it is soon to hit the carbon neutral target marking a significant shift in the scale and pace of its ambitions.

“We have set the ambition to become net zero by 2030 and the work to realise this ambition starts today. The journey to reach this target is complex and there are many unknowns, but Nando’s success was built on the belief that there is no limit to what people can achieve if fired up by extraordinary aspirations,” he says.

Peach Pubs is another business that has placed sustainability high on its agenda and is keen to make things ‘peachy for the planet’. Managing director Hamish Stoddart says he took the time during lockdown to conduct some proper research on where the business currently is and where it could be on these sorts of issues. While the business is in the early stages of its journey when it comes to becoming carbon net zero, Stoddart says that, as a personal project, he, and consequently Peach, has been supporting a carbon sequestration project in Kenya for the past 12 years.

“We haven’t measured our offset yet, we have just been putting money into the project,” he admits, “but we are now starting to talk about the reality of it”. He believes the industry is capable of going a long way towards being carbon zero, and he hopes the pub company can be at the forefront of that. It is currently working on its own plan and is looking to make commitments on carbon later this year, he explains.

The hidden cost of food waste

Packer, who is-co chair of the forum’s scope three working group, alongside Nando’s head of sustainability Henry Unwin, says it’s important to assess the impact of every aspect of the business, from the food and uniforms it purchases to distribution. “If you work in the food sector, food is a polluter. Around 18% of all the world’s greenhouse gases are contributed by agriculture – and then you have to layer on top the shipping and any wastage,” he explains.

Pizza Hut Restaurants has significantly cut its electricity and gas consumption over the past 15 to 20 years and over the last six or so has cut operational food waste in its kitchens by around 75%. It’s a topic that Packer is very passionate about. With one third of all the food produced globally for human consumption lost or thrown away, the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that if food waste were a country, it would be the third highest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions.

So how does an operator like Pizza Hut Restaurants, which offers help-yourself salad bars and all you can eat pizza options, balance the moral imperative to reduce food waste, with offering customers value for money? Packer admits that while its operational food waste is less than 2%, compared to an industry average of around 10%, the challenge is what happens once the food leaves the kitchen. This is where there is some tension between what’s good for the environment and what’s good commercially.

“If you reduce portion size, you’d get complaints and they’d expect you to reduce the price – but if we cut the price of our pizzas by 10%, we’d be a loss-making business. It’s a difficult conversation to have,” he says. One thing it does do is donate any food left on the buffet which customers haven’t touched to local organisations such as homeless shelters. At some stage Packer anticipates that it will also start marketing ethical eating to its customers, by way of suggesting they don’t take any more than they need, because if they leave the food on the buffet, the business can do “something amazing with it”. The introduction of crust-less pizzas is also another idea on the table as this is where a high proportion of the waste comes from.

Can’t afford not to

In addition to the moral and cost saving incentives of reducing your carbon footprint, Packer points out that there are legislative and taxation regimes coming down the pipeline that are going to force businesses to start thinking about some of these issues. “What is also encouraging is we are starting to see and hear about investors who are really starting to care about this. Big institutional investors are starting to make investments based on company’s environmental policies,” he says.

If organisations can’t access capital because those who would traditionally lend or invest money will not do so due to bad environmental practices, surely that would make even the most backwards-thinking companies sit up and think, believes Packer. Forget not being able to get food out of the field in 10 months’ time, if you can’t get money out of the bank in 10 months’ time, something has got to change.

“Carbon is not the only problem the world faces but it’s a big one, and it’s pressing,” he says. While the roadmap is only a starting point, it will set out a timeline to work to and how businesses can measure success. There may be a long way to go but it’s a step in the right direction.