Seven principles of sustainable foods - where are we now?

In my first posts I promised to write a post about how The Schoolhouse is doing when it comes to the basic principles of sustainable food. It has to be remembered, though, that there is no official definition what is sustainable food, nor has there been a consensus reached what exactly should be done in orded to be “sustainable”. It is individual and each company – and individual, for that matter – should examine what would be the best options for it. However, there are always guides and recommendations, and the seven principles of sustainable food found in many sources are quite good and give guidance to what should be done. Let’s see, step by step, how The Schoolhouse fits to those principles:

1. Use local, seasonally available ingredients, to minimise energy used in food production and to support local people.

This is probably the most crucial part of sustainable foods, and I am happy to say that The Schoolhouse follows this rule actually really well already. As can be seen from many earlier posts, we use – or are going to use – a lot of our own seasonally available fruits, vegetables and nuts. This season we have already begun to use our own xiang chun, radish and mint, which otherwise would have been bought and transported. Soon we are going to serve our own onion, lettuce, rucola, cucumber and herbs, and that surely reduced the burden on the environment. Later on this year, we are going have rather big amounts of our own wallnuts, chestnuts, peers and persimmons, among others.

We also use a lot of local, or at least nearby suppliers. From Huairou, only 20km from the village, we buy local vegetables (those we don’t have in the garden), fruits, chicken, beef, lamb, pork, bacon, sausages, flour, rice, noodles and yoghurt, among some others. We usually only by vegetables that are in season - we don’t want vegetables that has been imported - which is an important thing when it comes to sustainability. I guess it depends on the reader whether you count as "local" something we buy from a nearby town, but I guess it’s pretty good. One has to bear in mind that all of those things are from China and from the same municipality than we are in, so the transportation and energy needed is quite minimal, compared to most restaurants in Finland, for example, where lots of food is imported to the country. However, we could be more local and there are plans to achieve that - we are planning to get suppliers from the villages for chicken, eggs and apricot, among others. They have those things here, so there shouldn’t be any need for getting them from Huairou, although that is quite local as well. But to get them from here would support local villagers, which surely would be much appreciated. We'll see how everything works out.

There is one step that The Schoolhouse took just recently towards being more local and more sustainable. We stopped importing our steaks from Australia and started to serve Chinese meat, grown in farms, bought from Shunyi, about 40min drive from the village. If one could count the energy saved and pollution reduced in a year because of this change, the outcome would be no doubt impressive. In addition, the fish we use in our restaurant is purchased from Enbeigo, which is one of the neighbouring villages. We buy them alive and put them into our own trout pond – so we have always truly fresh and local trout to serve. For the other food, worth mentioning is for example wallnuts which we buy from farmers from a nearby village.

2. Specify food from farming systems that minimise harm to the environment such as certified organic produce.

We are undertaking a major compost program, and we are going to use the compost as organic fertilizer in our garden. We are going to make sure that all the compost is being used in the village, so that we don’t use any chemicals in our gardening. However, we haven’t found out what are the procedures of the farms the suppliers are getting the food from, so I can’t really say we are getting food from farming systems that minimise harm to the environment. That is something that we indeed should find out and pick suppliers who are environmentally friendly – surely there are many to choose from. However, we can’t be perfect and the first step is to make sure we are as local as possible - rest will follow.

3. Limit food of animal origin served, as livestock farming is one of the most
significant contributors to the climate change.

We do offer many vegetarian options and vegetables play a significant role in our dishes, but it can’t be said that The Schoolhouse is limiting food of animal origin in order to be environmentally friendly. We changed the Australian meet to Chinese meet, and we are looking for chicken etc suppliers from the villages, and that’s our effort when in comes to sustainability and meet. It would be naïve to just read seven principles and say we have to do it all. It’s all individual and different options are suitable for different companies. Cutting of the meat can suite some companies, but that wouldn’t work with The Schoolhouse. Our trademark dishes include burgers and t-bone steak, and turning vegetarian just wouldn’t suite us. You have to keep the business, otherwise you can’t be sustainable in any way, right? However, something to think about would be to reduce a little bit the amount of meat used and replace the reduction with vegetables.

4. Exclude fish species identified as most “at risk” by The Marine Conservation Society. The Marine Conservation Society has a list of the fishes that should be avoided in order to achieve sustainability, and a list of fishes ok to serve. Avoid list: http://www.fishonline.org/advice/avoid/ Eat list: http://www.fishonline.org/advice/eat/.

This is a part where we do exceptionally well. If you look at the “eat” list, you can see that organically farmed trout is on the list – and that is the fish we use in our restaurant in large quantities. Besides that and canned tuna, we don’t actually use other fish. We use quite a lot of trout, but that is organically farmed from a local village and kept in our trout pond in The Roadhouse restaurant (pictures). So, our “trout use” is basically as sustainable as it can be – no damage to the environment and we provide benefits for local people. Our canned tuna is also Chinese, but from southern Guang Dong province. There are different kinds of tunas in the “avoid” list, but as many different ones in the “eat” list as well. Bluefin tuna is the biggest “nono” in tunas, and according to our chef our tuna isn’t that one. Also, most of the tunas on the “eat” list says “southern or middle Pasific”, so that is a good sign as well – the tuna caught in Guang Dong is from Pacific. In 2006, the treatment of tuna with carbon monoxide was legally banned in China, and that makes at least in theory Chinese tuna good in some way. Anyway, this is just speculation, I would really like to learn more about what’s our tuna like. But the trout, as said, is perfectly fitting with sustainable food principles, and that’s just great.

5. Choose Fair Trade certified products for imported food and drinks

Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that basically helps producers in developing countries and promotes sustainability. To put it in one sentence, fair trade certificated companies assure that producers get paid fairly and the working conditions are appropriate. The aim is to reduce the unfair exploitation of farmers and producers in developing countries, and to make sure they get paid as they should and they don’t have to work in unhealthy conditions. The most famous product where fair trade has been implemented is coffee, but there are also fair trade certificates for tea, chocolate, fruit, honey and flower producers, among others. At the moment, for many operational reasons, we don’t get products (coffee, tea etc) from specific fair trade certificated companies, but that is something we might dig in to in the future.

6. Avoid bottled water and instead serve filtered tap water in reusable jugs or bottles.

This is one of the most straight-forward principles of being environmentally friendly, be it a part of sustainable foods of not. Everyone should avoid using small package sizes – that’s unnecessary waste for the overfilled landfills! We are doing quite well with following this principle, although we do still offer complimentary bottled water in the rental houses. We serve cleaned tap water in our restaurant and that’s the water the staff drinks here as well. By using cleaned tap water instead of bottled water we significantly reduce our waste volume. In addition, we recycle all the bottles we use. In the rental houses we use refillable containers for shampoo and conditioner as well as for soap. So the amount of bottles going to landfills from The Schoolhouse is minimal. We have been also seriously planning to replace the bottled water served in the rental houses with large refillable water containers. I will let you know how this plans go ahead.

7. Promote health and wellbeing by cooking with generous portions of vegetables, fruits and starchy staples like wholegrains, cutting down on salt, fats and oils, and cutting out artificial additives.

Everything here at The Schoolhouse is homemade from the scratch. We don’t use any artificial additives what so ever – no chemical additives, colourings, flavourings or stabilizers. All is natural to a really great extend. That is really real here, no fake, and that’s something not so many restaurants can say. It’s our trademark in a way. Our dishes include rather generous portions of vegetables and are surely healthier than food in restaurants around here in general – that’s my impression anyway. However, we do not use wholegrain wheat, which is something we could easily do. Let’s see whether that’s something we’re going to do or not. Today we started to plan with our chef to replace our salt with Kosher salt, which - unlike common table salt - contains no additives. That makes it a healthier option. Kosher salt has a much larger grain size than regular table salt, and a more open granular structure - if someone is interested.

I would also add one thing here, which is overall waste reduction. Restaurants create an overwhelming amount of waste in the world and every restaurant should do it’s own part in trying to reduce the waste volume. Here, as can be seen from earlier posts, we are undertaking a major composting program which will reduce our waste loads significantly. We also pay attention to waste reduction constantly in menu planning – how all the food could be used as efficiently as possible so that the amount of food being thrown away would be minimal. This is done by, for example, combining different foods and using daily specials. We also try our to keep the portion sizes in control, so that – again – we could minimize the amount of food being thrown away. This subject was for example discussed in a meeting some days ago. However, this is rather hard to do, as in every restaurant, but fortunately we are going to have the compost program to help us in the matter.

So, to put it all together, I’d say The Schoolhouse is doing pretty good when it comes to the principles of sustainable foods. Nobody’s ever perfect and of course there are areas where we could improve, but if you try to do too much too soon too well, it doesn’t work and nobody wins. We are, step by step, going towards being as sustainable as possible, and we are serious about that, but everything just can’t be done. Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that we are doing more than most of the restaurants in the world. But, we can always do more - hence the sustainable food program we are undertaking.

Have a great week everyone!