Whether you're a restaurant, caterer, or hotel, setting actionable sustainability goals is a crucial task nowadays, as the hospitality industry goes through times of great transformation, shifting to more sustainable practices.
However, the real challenge is translating these goals into tangible actions and measurable outcomes. With impending regulations on climate reporting and increasing consumer demand for transparency, businesses must be prepared to navigate this ever-evolving landscape skillfully.
Here’s some expert tips from our team on how to set and meet your sustainability targets like a pro.
Navigating the Regulatory Landscape
The regulatory environment around climate reporting is rapidly evolving. Governments worldwide are introducing legislation aimed at reducing carbon footprints and promoting sustainability. For the food and hospitality sector, this means being prepared for mandatory climate reporting and stricter environmental standards that might not affect all businesses just yet, but most definitely will in the future.
While specific regulations may still be on the horizon, proactive businesses can gain a competitive edge by voluntarily adopting robust sustainability practices now.
Setting Realistic and Achievable Goals
It all starts from setting the right goals. And, as much as ambitious goals are essential to create real change, they still need to be realistic and actionable for your sustainability strategy to work out.
So, how do you set effective sustainability targets for your food business?
Assess Your Current Impact
By now you know: at Klimato we’re strong believers in the power of data, and of measuring your impact accurately as a first step to initiate meaningful change.
Which is why starting by conducting a thorough assessment of your current environmental impact is crucial. This includes analyzing energy usage, waste generation, water consumption, and carbon emissions. For the food industry, unpacking and measuring Scope 3 emissions - taking up to 90% of food company emissions according to some estimates - is particularly crucial.
When it comes to Scope 3 and food-related emissions, the Klimato tool is the perfect ally to seamlessly provide your team with a detailed picture of your starting point, from which to start strategizing to reduce emissions.
Define Clear Objectives
Based on your emissions’ assessment, it is essential to define clear and specific sustainability objectives, prioritizing the areas that are most critical and where there’s most room for improvement. For food businesses, these could typically include:
- Reducing food waste by a certain percentage
- Switching to fully or partially plant-based menus
- Reducing water consumption
- Implementing carbon labeling on menus
Engage Stakeholders Along the Way
Getting your team on board is essential in order to reach your climate targets efficiently and join forces in your sustainability journey. Educating and engaging stakeholders - including staff, suppliers and customers - ensures everyone is aligned with your goals and contributes to achieving them. Never underestimate the power of a committed workforce!
Making It Happen
With goals in place, the next and most critical step is implementation. Here are some practical strategies to help you achieve your sustainability targets.
Unlock the Power of Carbon Labeling
Carbon labeling provides transparency about the environmental impact of your food offerings. By clearly displaying the carbon footprint of each dish, you can empower customers to make more sustainable choices and encourage suppliers to reduce their emissions. On top of that, making good use of carbon labels is a powerful, climate smart way of boosting sales and benefitting your bottom line too.
Master Climate Reporting
There’s no way around this: adopting comprehensive climate reporting practices to track your progress and identify areas for improvement is essential for a successful sustainability strategy. Engaging in regular reporting not only ensures accountability but also prepares your business for future regulatory requirements. Curious to dig deeper into reporting? Check out our blog post, in which we help you navigate the current regulatory maze.
Tap Into Expert Support
Navigating the complexities of sustainability can be challenging - which is why choosing the right allies is crucial. Partnering with experts who offer tailored, industry-specific sustainability services can provide invaluable support along your journey. From carbon accounting to climate reporting, expert guidance can streamline your efforts and maximize your impact - letting a team of food sustainability experts like Klimato’s handle all the hard stuff, so you don’t have to.
Celebrating and Communicating Your Achievements
Achieving your sustainability goals is an ongoing process, but celebrating milestones along the way is crucial. Most importantly, it gets your customers involved on your sustainability journey, adding branding value and boosting your reputation. Communicating your successes to your customers and stakeholders through various channels, such as your website, social media, and press releases is a great way to keep stakeholders updated.
Transparency about your progress builds trust and demonstrates your genuine commitment to sustainability, beyond empty promises. And if you’re just starting to dive into sustainability marketing, we recommend checking our Sustainability Marketing guide!
Bringing Results In As a Global Player: The Sodexo AstraZeneca Case
Our customer Sodexo AstraZeneca is close to a textbook example on how a committed team working on an actionable food sustainability strategy can do wonders.
Klimato has been working with Sodexo-run AstraZeneca catering outlets for almost five years, helping them on their mission to track and reduce food-related emissions. Using the Klimato tool, the sustainability team at AstraZeneca has been able to access country-specific food emission data, benchmarking against other global accounts and accessing a wide array of environmental indicators from our database.
“The Klimato tools easily allow us to track our progress over time and identify what changes we need to make in order to reach our targets. By Moving AZ Sweden to the Klimato database we can now compare our data globally by using the same methodology - ensuring a coherent way of measuring climate data from food.“
- Johnny Sandberg, Food Development and Sustainability Lead at Sodexo SE
Supported by WWF, Sodexo set the ambitious goal of having 70% of the main dishes on their menus labeled as “low-carbon” by 2030. Thanks to their ongoing efforts, both AstraZeneca UK & Sweden sites have reached the Sodexo target of 0.9kg CO2e per meal served.
On their side, AstraZeneca implemented an even more ambitious target of 0.8 kg CO2e per meal served in their restaurants, keeping a tolerance level of 1.0 kg CO2e per meal served.
Overall, the Sodexo AZ global account achieved impressive results in just a few years since using Klimato, managing to reach their ambitious climate targets.
Conclusion
Setting and achieving ambitious sustainability goals in the food and hospitality industry isn't just about ticking regulatory boxes—it's your chance to lead by example, fortify your business, and make a positive mark on the planet.
By evaluating your impact, setting clear targets and embracing sustainable practices, you can confidently steer through this evolving landscape. Our team of climate experts is here to support you at every step of the journey, crafting a more sustainable future together - one meal at a time.