The climate eats too

25.06.2019 - Resources are becoming scarcer, sustainability is playing an increasingly important role. Even in the office. In our Green Office series, we show you how you can make your everyday office life more sustainable with just a few tricks. Small changes can have a big impact. This is not only good for the ecological balance sheet, but can even reduce your operating costs, depending on the subject area.

Sustainable catering means thinking outside the box

Many people pay attention to seasonal, regional and fair production when shopping privately - this can easily be transferred to the ingredients used in catering. Whether it's the morning coffee, the status meeting, the Christmas party or the big event - environmentally conscious catering starts with the food served.

A long way to go

Kiwano, loquat, rambutan - ever heard of them? Kumquat, pomelo, sweet potato - maybe yes. But you're guaranteed to recognise them: Banana, peach and tomato. The import of exotic foods is almost as old as mankind itself. While many exotic plants have long since been given "green cards", others cannot be grown in our latitudes. Too cold, too windy, too wet.

So that we can still enjoy them, they are imported. Usually by sea. A pineapple from Costa Rica takes up to 25 days to reach European harbours. Apples and kiwis from New Zealand take around five weeks. During this time, the fruit must be stored in a cool and damp place to stop the ripening process. This costs energy and therefore resources.

Furthermore, most container ships on the oceans still run on heavy fuel oil, a cheap residue from refinery production. The unfiltered pollutants contained in the heavy fuel oil exhaust gases, such as sulphur and nitrogen oxides as well as soot particles and particulate matter, pollute the environment. In the oceans as well as in coastal regions. According to Naturschutzbund Deutschland e.V. (Nabu), around 50,000 people die prematurely every year in Europe as a result of ship emissions.

The heavy fuel oil on board the ships is processed in an energy-intensive process: First heated, then cleaned of solids, the resulting residue sludge is sometimes still illegally pumped into the sea.

Perhaps you would prefer the flying mango after all? Some exotic fruit reaches us almost exclusively by air. For example, around 90 per cent of papayas. However, flying causes 170 times as many emissions as travelling by ship. Not a sustainable alternative.

Sweet fruit with a bitter aftertaste

Transport routes are one thing, cultivation and the associated environmental costs are another. Take the avocado, for example: thanks to its nutritional values, it has become the epitome of a conscious diet. Ecologically, however, it is questionable. According to research by "Die Zeit", 1,000 litres of water are used to grow one kilogram of avocados. For two and a half. And that's in regions where water is often scarce. By comparison, the global average for one kilogram of tomatoes is just 180 litres. Added to this is the cultivation in monocultures. "Every year, 1500 to 4000 hectares of forest are cleared to make room for avocado fields," says Jaime Navia from the Mexican agricultural and environmental organisation Gira.

So how can the environmental impact of the food served be reduced?

Regional alternatives can be chosen instead of exotics. A good example of how these are usually the better choice is the supposed superfood chia. The pseudo-cereal is now grown in several countries in South America and Australia. The alternative: flax. Nutritionally almost indistinguishable and native. So why keep turning to chia?

Seasonal is the magic word

Another question: do products that are native to our country in the summer months have to be on the menu in winter? It used to be a matter of course to check the seasonal calendar when shopping: the asparagus season traditionally runs from mid to late April until 24 June. Strawberries are available in summer, between May and August.

The fact that almost all fruit and vegetables are available all year round today is made possible by greenhouse cultivation, fast means of transport and sophisticated storage technology. This means that foods that can be harvested at certain times of the year have a similarly poor carbon footprint as the exotic produce mentioned above. This is because in order for Christmas dinner to be topped with a strawberry and mascarpone dessert, the fruit has to be imported. Just like papaya and pineapple. This also applies to plums from South Africa, courgettes from Italy and potatoes from Sudan.

For sustainable catering, it is better to reach for the seasonal fruit basket instead. You can often literally taste the regionality, as the plants have been able to fully ripen before being harvested and sold. By buying from the farmer next door, you not only save_{CO2 emissions} and protect the environment, you also support the regional economy and local trade.

Plants instead of meat

To produce meat, you need space - for keeping the animals and for the plants grown to feed them. To satisfy the hunger for meat in Germany, almost 19 million hectares of agricultural land are needed - more than the total amount of arable land available in this country.

Almost 70 per cent of the direct greenhouse emissions associated with our diet are attributable to meat consumption. The consumption of plant-based food, on the other hand, only accounts for a third. This is shown by the results of the WWF's "Climate change on a plate" study. "Giving up ham sandwiches or hamburgers is active climate protection," says Tanja Dräger de Teran, WWF Climate Protection and Nutrition Officer.

The first step is therefore to reduce dishes prepared with animal-based foods and choose a selection of vegan dishes instead. If dishes are offered in combinations, for example the tomato sauce separately from the meatballs, everyone can decide for themselves. Elsewhere, meat can easily be substituted: chestnuts, a spicy portobello mushroom or a piece of well-seasoned tofu.

Sounds fishy

Prefer fish instead of meat? Okay, there's the overfishing of the world's oceans, the trawling nets that destroy the seabed, the demise of the much-cited and abstractly named "bycatch". Marine animals that are sold at dumping prices often have a high ecological (and more than questionable ethical) price.

No problem with aquaculture - right? Far from it. In order to breed fish from aquaculture, wild fish is also caught and fed. These fisheries are often not sustainable. What's more, as many animals are kept in open net pools in the sea, diseases from the farm can easily spread to other members of the species. The pesticides and antibiotics used here not only end up in the fish, but also in the environment.

Labelling

If you still want to offer meat or fish for catering, look out for the relevant certifications that not only make the animals' lives at least a little better, but also protect the environment. The same applies to exotic fruit and vegetables. If something is often labelled as "green" when it is hardly organic, regional or sustainable, certifications such as MSC, Fairtrade, Naturland, Bioland and Demeter can help you classify it.

From plastic spoons to coffee cups

Eating seasonal snacks from the region with plastic cutlery from coated paper plates? Right after the food comes the choice of crockery and packaging when it comes to sustainable catering. According to surveys by GVM Gesellschaft für Verpackungsmarktforschung, over 105,500 tonnes of waste were produced by to-go plastic in 2017 alone. One thing is certain: reusable is always better than disposable. This saves waste and energy, both in production and disposal - and therefore resources.

Suppliers often provide disposable cutlery as a service, even though the company has a fully equipped kitchen. Communicate in good time which services are required so that unnecessary waste can be avoided. By the way: According to a decision by the European Union, plastic cutlery, chopsticks and plates will be banned throughout the EU from 2021. The same applies to beverage and food packaging made of foamed plastic (polystyrene) for fast food or fruit. Even if one or two caterers or delivery services may be taken aback at first, they are leading the way in a change that is inevitable anyway.

Empty quantities

Each of us throws away at least 55 kilograms of food every year - according to a study by the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (GfK), funded by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food in 2017. A total of 4.4 million tonnes of food ends up in the bin in private households, which equates to 150 grams per person every day. To prevent the mountain from getting any bigger, it is important to avoid food waste from the outset when planning a catering event. If there is still some leftover food, offer to take away leftovers - in sustainable (reusable) containers, of course.

That's a lot of information at once. No wonder, because the topic is more complex than you might initially think. Realising this and thinking outside the box is necessary in order to reduce your own ecological footprint. And it's worth it, because there's more to it than meets the eye.