Zero Waste Kitchen

Why achieving zero waste is hard for restaurants?

Zero-waste cooking means leaving no waste behind while cooking. This also includes consuming all parts of ingredients in one way or another.  Practicing zero-waste cooking means using each part of fruits, vegetables, or meat. It doesn’t mean that you’ll use every part in one dish. Different parts can be stored/froze and used when required. 

Today zero-waste cooking is trending worldwide to achieve sustainability and reduce food waste. Businesses can be certified as zero-waste when they’re able to achieve 90% of waste-free processes in their commercial kitchens by reducing and reusing all resources.

This ensures that management is taking steps to reduce, reuse, recycle, compost products to accelerate the food waste process. The main goal is to lessen the negative environmental impact of food waste while running restaurants. 

In the US alone half of the food produced goes into the trash. With restaurants like McDonald’s, Starbucks is taking initiatives with “no straw Monday” it’s only a drop in the basket. Research shows that restaurants trying to reduce food waste are able to save $7 for every $1 invested.

We currently are realizing how food waste is damaging our environment, but this is also the high time to take measures.

Achieving zero-waste is hard but not impossible. To make the process easy for you we’re sharing some ways.

Consume all parts of food

The basic way to achieve zero-waste cooking is to use all parts of the ingredients you’re using to cook. Obviously, chefs need to be creative to thin how to use peels of potatoes, bananas. On the internet, there are numerous ways mentioned to consume leftover coffee grounds, meat bones. 

This doesn’t mean to use all the leftover parts in one single dish but you can store those parts and use them later in other dishes. In fact, you can also repurpose these unused parts outside your kitchen for example instead of throwing away rinds of oranges or lemons give them to your bartender to use in cocktails.

Serve in small portions

In the US restaurants serve larger portion sizes as compared to the other countries in Europe or Asia.  The American diet has changed completely in the last 20 years. Our large portion sizes not only aids in food waste but also increasing obesity in our community. 

To reduce food waste consider smaller serving portions. Rather than taking leftovers home, customers will finish their meal on the spot.  We recommend restaurants to avoid plastic packaging for leftover food as plastic waste also harms our environment. 

Compost leftover scraps

Achieving 100% waste-free cooking is challenging for everyone.  Even with small portions, repurpose cooking techniques you may not achieve a zero-waste kitchen. To utilize those leftover vegetable or fruit scraps compost them. This will provide nutrition to fertilizers and you’ll experience a new cycle of fresh fruits and vegetables. 

 

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