INTERNATIONAL FOOD WASTE AWARENESS DAY
In the lead up to International Food Waste Awareness Day, we had a chat to Greg Piner, head chef of No.7 Balmac about running a busy restaurant while keeping sustainability and reducing food waste front of mind.
Greg says it all comes down to eliminating food waste and waste in general, as much as possible to begin with, and dealing with any waste they do have in a sustainable way.
He’s a huge advocate of recycling everything, saying that what they do in an industrial kitchen is setting future standards of what people can do at home albeit on a smaller scale.
No. 7 Balmac has a wonderful kitchen garden which would be the envy of many chefs. It comes complete with compost bins and their own beehives which means they can make their own honey and grow their own seasonal herbs and vegetables.
Greg’s kitchen team work hard to ensure that while they are prepping for service, they are being mindful to use every part of the produce they are working with. Off cuts of vegetables are used for stocks that provide those deep rich flavours for many dishes and what isn’t used goes straight out into the compost bins, which in turn feeds their kitchen gardens.
“It’s the circle of life”, says Greg and although on an industrial kitchen scale, he likes to think consumers are able to embrace the same principles at home – “it’s all about respecting the land”.
Avoiding food spoilage by not over ordering is also something that chefs are great at managing. After all, any food that is ordered and not used will affect their bottom line. It’s a good model for consumers to follow by not over purchasing at the supermarket – it will save money and means you don’t have that waste to dispose of when you clean out your fridge at the end of the week.
Even better, growing your own produce or buying from farmers markets ensures you are using fresh seasonal produce, which can also keep the food bill down.
Front of house are trained to keep an eye on what customers are ordering to avoid plate waste from over-ordering off the menu. If customers do over order, then doggy bags are offered or scarps go into the compost bin or the worm farm.
At home, leftovers can be used in a number of creative ways the next day and it can often be more economical for home cooks to ‘cook once and eat twice’.
Beef + Lamb Young Ambassador Chef finalist, Ashley Knudsen recognises how worrying the stats are on an environmental level. Being Gen Z she wants to try and change that by doing her bit to reduce as much waste as she can and ensuring that food waste in particular is diverted from landfill.
Ashley echoes Greg’s practices at No. 7 Balmac and as a chef loves to be able to control what they use and how they use it. Having a kitchen garden and being able to pick fresh herbs and vegetables before each service ensures that only what is needed is picked fresh each day. Having animals at her home is also a wonderful way to recycle any waste she does end up with by feeding scraps to her pigs and chickens.
At the end of the day, diverting food waste from landfill is the best thing we can all do to protect the environment, whether we are chefs or home cooks.