Article

5 ways restaurants can embrace sustainable packaging

If customers believe you are irresponsible in sourcing your packaging, they may cease to give you their business.

February 27, 2014

 By Ian Lifshitz,
Sustainability director for the Americas, Asia Pulp & Paper Group

Managing a restaurant invites a host of challenges, ranging from hiring and ordering supplies to running operations and fostering profitability. To add to the mix, increasing consumer demand for cost effective, sustainably sourced materials is challenging restaurant owners and managers to identify and source such material or face loss of customers.

When hearing the word "sustainability," many restaurant owners and managers might initially think of the farm-to-table menus sweeping the country. However, there is another equally important side of sustainability — assuring greater sustainability of the paper products and packaging used to deliver your products.

Sustainable packaging has traditionally been a secondary focus of busy restaurant managers and owners, but customers are now increasingly questioning the sustainability of packaging because it is tangibly associated with the brand and is something they can influence with their buying decision. If customers believe you are irresponsible in sourcing your packaging, they may cease to give you their business — no matter how great your products or prices.

So, how do you assure that you're sustainable and compliant? The following tips can help guide these decisions and processes:

1. Trace the sourcing of your packaging materials:Restaurant owners' decisions have traditionally been based primarily on what happens to their product packaging once discarded. But more recently, consumers are increasingly basing purchasing decisions on the traceability and sustainability of products and packaging through the entire supply chain. At the core, consumers want assurance that their packaging is from a legal, acceptable and sustainably managed source. As traceability is both an environmental and ethical issue, restaurants need to adapt their sourcing to provide their customers greater supply chain transparency from field to procurement to transport to end-of-life.

2. Look to neutral, non-profit organizations that conduct certification auditing:These NGOs verify whether sustainability certification standards are being upheld, and then provide certifications of sustainable products and companies. Examples of non-profits advancing forest certification include:

• FSC —The Forestry Stewardship Council, considered the most stringent certification standard, was created by environmental and community leaders in the 1990s;
• PEFC — The Program for the Endorsement of Forestry Certification, the world's largest forestry certification program, is an umbrella group working with national and large forestry certification programs to create a global certification program; and
• SFI — The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a U.S. forestry certification program, is under the PEFC umbrella.
  

3. Consider renewable resources for packaging needs: Today, restaurants must consider products derived from renewable resources, be they recycled or plantation-grown fiber from quick-growing trees, waste wheat chaff or other materials. For example, paper and board packaging can be made from virgin fiber sustainably sourced from renewable plantations. Certain equatorial climates in particular allow faster tree growth and shortened maturity cycles for tree harvesting.

4. Examine opportunities to employ reusable packaging: Traditionally, reusable packaging isn't the first concern of restaurant owners, but more recently, reusable packaging for to-go products is attracting increasing interest among consumers who appreciate the additional, tangible and "greener" value they derive once food is consumed. In 2011, Pizza Hut introduced a multi-use pizza box in Costa Rica; cleverly, the box breaks down into plates and a smaller box for leftovers.

5. Implement measures to reduce food waste: Efforts to reduce food waste continue to gain focus, with groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council approximating that 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. Composting food scraps, switching to a new type of packaging that helps food stay fresh longer, or simply making it easier for consumers to remove all food products from the container could all help reduce waste. Based on a recent Mintel survey, it is clear that consumers agree — 92 percent of respondents indicated a preference for packaging that helps food retain freshness; 80 percent indicated a preference for resealable packaging.

Spending a little time researching and understanding the sourcing of your packaging can pay long-term dividends — particularly from environmental, financial and brand perception perspectives. With consumers being more mindful of business environmental practices, it is more important than ever for restaurants to consider their environmental impact and implement measures to mitigate it.

Ian Lifshitz is the sustainability director for the Americas at Asia Pulp & Paper Group. He is responsible for leading the company's sustainability and related stakeholder engagement programs across Canada, the United States, and South America.

Photo: Courtesy of ekoworld