Heathrow and the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) first started working together in October 2015 to create a sustainability community for the airport’s food and beverage (F&B) retail and lounge business partners.
“There was a lack of shared purpose on sustainability,” says Simon Heppner, co-founder and director of the SRA. “In a traditional landlord-tenant relationship the landlord is on top and they’re telling the tenant what to do, which inevitably sets up tensions. It fails to recognise that in lots of ways the goals of both parties are the same and so to achieve those goals a collaborative approach is likely to be more successful.
“That was the issue Heathrow was facing. Many of Heathrow’s sustainability goals rely on influencing their business partners to take action. For example, the waste from the F&B partners is about 10% of Heathrow’s total waste and they use about 1GWh of energy. So when Heathrow says it wants to reduce waste and energy, it can’t do that unless it is working with those businesses.”
Shared sustainability goals
Working with the Heathrow Sustainability Partnership, the SRA set about establishing a more collaborative community. In November 2015, they kicked off proceedings with a workshop that brought together representatives from the airport’s food and beverage retailers and lounge providers, and established the common ground between individual company sustainability goals and those of the airport’s.
That workshop became the foundation of the Ingredients for Success community, launched in March 2016. The community works together on six key sustainability focus areas including energy, water and waste. For each of these, the food services community has agreed goals, with Heathrow making commitments to support their achievement.
For example, food retailers have promised to segregate their waste in line with the waste streams collected by the airport, as well as reducing contamination. In return, Heathrow is reviewing the way they communicate information to their F&B business partners, and creating guidelines collaboratively with them.
The F&B business partners will also track their water and energy usage, setting reduction targets and reporting these to Heathrow. The airport will, in turn, supply existing metered data and, where appropriate, support additional metering.
“Creating a common goal is important so we’re all doing the same thing and are all aligned,” says Michael Jackson, Heathrow retail manager. “The challenge is focusing on some of the basics, like bins and turning off lights – it’s not a glamorous subject so it’s been [about] working with our partners on these issues.”
The SRA has supported these efforts by running workshops bringing together relevant stakeholders on key issues, such as waste and recycling. And being a neutral voice in the discussion.
Lessons learned
Susie Barry, who works as a health safety manager for Eurest Food, has found the meetings to be very productive.
Since getting involved with Ingredients for Success, she has conducted a survey of catering equipment and their energy usage to help staff adjust their behaviours and improve energy efficiency.
“Catering equipment uses a lot of energy and I don’t think I’ll upset the chefs too much when I say they would often be coming in early in the morning and switching on all the machines whether they need them right away or not. So behaviour was the first thing we addressed. Once we had the data we could say: ‘OK, this is what it’s costing you to operate it, do you need that dishwasher on at 7am or can it go on at 9am?’”
For many of Heathrow’s F&B business partners, sustainability has been a big learning curve. Jane Godfrey is a clubhouse duty manager with Virgin, working out of Terminal 3. She admits she knew very little about the potential for saving energy, water and waste within the food sector beforehand.
“We as an airline have a sustainability policy called Changes is in the Air, but it’s more focused on emissions,” she says. “For us to be able to focus on this really opened our eyes to what we could do. I’ve learned some very valuable information from the SRA, and it’s good to share ideas with the other businesses in the airport.”
Godfrey and her team have implemented a number of changes through their involvement in Ingredients for Success. They now source more ingredients locally to reduce air miles, and send 92% of their food waste to be anaerobically digested, producing biogas for energy and physical matter that is then used for animal bedding, compost and fertiliser.
Beyond Heathrow
It’s been just over a year since Ingredients for Success was launched, and reactions have been mostly positive.
“There’s been a little bit of cynicism from business partners who have been there for a long time, where they’re wondering whether this is going to change anything,” Heppner admits. “But at the same time they turn up to the meetings and are quite vociferous, so they’re invested even if they don’t want to be.”
It’s hoped that the lessons learned within the complex food and drinks sector can be applied to other businesses within the airport’s retail community and beyond.
“What Heathrow is doing is fairly pioneering,” says Heppner. “The longer term goal is for it to be duplicated in other similar environments, whether that’s airports, shopping centres or elsewhere. Because the same problems exist in all of these places where old style tenant-landlord relationships get in the way of sustainability issues, and a more collaborative approach can be incredibly effective.”
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