Map the carbon emissions in your supply chain

16 September 2022 by

Businesses tackling emissions coming from its supply chain need to work with suppliers to gain the bigger picture. The Caterer maps out the problem

Tackling carbon emissions is something the hospitality sector is taking very seriously, but the challenge of reaching net zero is also significant. Not least because the vast majority of emissions occur outside of the activities owned or controlled by operators and in the supply chain – known as scope three emissions. Steve Packer, chief infrastructure and sustainability officer at the Heart with Smart Group, which operates all 164 Pizza Hut restaurants under a franchise license in the UK, has been undertaking extensive work on this issue.

"We have zero emissions for scope two [indirect emissions] – we've been buying green electricity almost since it was invented… and 5% of our emissions are scope one [direct emissions]. We still use gas ovens and we have a little bit of gas for heating and refrigeration." Although he notes electric ovens are an inefficient way of heating pizzas.

"Around 95% of our footprint is in scope three. And most of that is the food and beverage we purchase, which account for 55% of emissions – and therefore most of the solutions to addressing it are in our supply chain."

Unsurprisingly, cheese is a major source of emissions and the group has beenworking closely with its main supplier, which recently appointed its first full-time sustainability manager.

"As a result, we now have a hit list of things we could potentially change. And that's the stage we're now at: discussing with our suppliers and farming partners about what we're actually going to do about the individual hotspots."

However, he notes this is where the picture gets a bit more complicated. "Some solutions are straightforward and save money, but most things are actually quite difficult and quite expensive…The annual cost of fixing all our carbon emissions is incredibly challenging given the low margins of our sector." Investment to fix this issue needs to be a shared cost. "A really good phrase I heard a few weeks ago is: you can't be green if you're in the red. In order for us to be sustainable environmentally, we also have to be sustainable economically and still be around to make good changes.

"Ultimately, I think everyone along the value chain is going to have to share the brunt of these costs. We're going to have to do it at some stage anyway, because if we don't all the food we purchase is going to get more expensive because of droughts, wild fires and crop failures."

Path to zero carbon

Cutting carbon footprints is clearly too big a challenge for anyone to tackle alone. One of the most important things operators can do when it comes to tackling scope three emissions is talk to suppliers as they're often on the same journey.

Food supplier Bidfood has undertaken extensive work scoping emissions. Shelley Morris, sustainability projects manager at the company, says scope three emissions make up almost 95% of its total footprint – making it a big area of focus.

Bidfood is in the process of setting a number of carbon targets and is working with sustainability consultant Carbon Intelligence to reach the target of net zero by 2045. It's also piloting a new methodology to accurately measure and report emissions from supply chains. "If successful, this will give businesses a consistent means by which to measure and track their progress in reducing supply chain emissions," says Morris.

She also notes that many of its customers are also requesting carbon labelling. "We are reviewing options to collect and provide this, but it is challenging and costly to get detailed information at product level." Mike Meek, procurement and sustainability director at food procurement company Allmanhall, says measuring complex scope three food emissions "must go hand-in-hand with expert supply chain management to drive much greater levels of transparency from food companies".

Technology such as the Foodsteps platform, which provides a carbon labelling system for caterers and consumers, can play an important role in measuring and reducing company food emissions.

Other tools can help, too. Meek says: "Product lifecycle assessments are the analysis required to understand the emissions levels produced at each stage of the product journey and really expel the now-outdated concept of food miles."

Glyndebourne Nether Wallop event
Glyndebourne Nether Wallop event

Reducing emissions across the supply chain requires transparency from the start, agrees Nigel Paine, supply chain director at soft drinks producer Britvic: "As part of our procurement process with potential suppliers, we request that they provide information on their sustainability management and performance to assist in our pre-assessment process," he says. He adds that this allows them to "get under the bonnet of any potential partners" to gauge their sustainability credentials. "Once we sign with a new supplier, our priority becomes proactively collaborating with them to enhance their sustainability performance further."

Ed Widdowson, site director at food ingredient business Macphie, works with UK-based suppliers wherever possible to reduce emissions. "At present, we source around 75% of our raw materials from businesses in the UK to minimise the need for extensive transportation. And when exporting product out of the UK, we opt for shipping over air freight to minimise the environmental impact as much as possible."

Nudging consumers

At the other end of the chain is the customer. Mitchells & Butlers, which owns a number of popular brands such as Harvester and All Bar One, is a large operator committed to tackling carbon emissions by gaining the full ‘farm to plate' view.

"We have set some high-level targets to hold ourselves publicly accountable on the work we are doing," says Amy De Marsac, head of sustainability at the group. "Obviously, we are part of a listed company so we disclose all our results publicly every year and we wanted to make sustainability a big part of that." Its goal is to reach net zero by 2040.

When the group started mapping its emissions in 2019, it discovered food represented 70% of overall group emissions. This led it to start working with the non-profit research body the World Resources Institute (WRI) to identify hotspots and talk to suppliers. It's also signed up to the WRI Cool Food Pledge, intended to reduce the impact of food served in restaurants. And it has launched a trial menu in Harvester, involving some newly developed meat-free, low-emission dishes.

"We've also been working with Beyond Burger to develop a Harvester special to see if that could gain any more traction to reduce our beef in terms of the amount of burgers that we sell," says De Marsac. Another tactic has been to flag low-emission dishes on the menu with a symbol, to see if that drives changes in consumer behaviour.

"It's still quite early in terms of how the trial is going, but we look forward to being able to draw some conclusions from the results in a couple of months," she says.

Restaurant Associates – which operates cafés and restaurants across the UK including sites at Somerset House in London and Glyndebourne opera house in Sussex – is doing something similar in terms of nudging consumer behaviour. To help meet its target of net zero by 2030, the group is increasing its use of plant proteins, using hyper-local suppliers, and encouraging guests to opt for low-carbon choices, such as non-diary milk. Its newly-launched Nether Wallop site at Glyndebourne, with chef Steve Groves, will feature a ‘plant-forward' menu, where 70% of meat-based dishes will comprise vegetables and plants.

Mapping the answer

Like many operators, Restaurant Associates is taking a systematic approach to understanding the problem, says Gavin Gooddy, marketing director: "We have a procurement team who monitor all of our supplier relationships. We map out the greatest opportunities to make a bigger difference to our environmental footprint," he says.

The group is working with a third party to track its climate action roadmap, as well as the University of Oxford using its Livestock, Environment and People (LEAP) programme. That provides an eco-label on dishes which highlights which meals have a higher (E) or lower (A) environmental impact.

It's also looking at tools that can help provide an overview of all the data. "We are beginning to work with some technology tools to help us articulate [the metrics] more clearly and to understand the carbon output of every single item and every single dish. That's something we've been testing for a while and are going to roll out in due course."

However, when it comes to gaining full visibility of scope three emissions in the supply chain, Kristen Filice, director of net zero strategy for the Zero Carbon Forum, says it's still early days. The non-profit was set up in 2020 to develop a sustainability roadmap for the UK's hospitality sector.

"We're still working on the data, conversion factors, supplier and procurement criteria, and consistency across the industry for how we measure [emissions] and the pace at which we need to move," she says. "The way we'll get there is through the actions of individual operators, amplified by the power, influence, and economies of scale of the united industry, backed by the right legislation and incentivisation and taxation structures. We need all those things for this to work," she explains.

"Our main emissions, of course, come from the food and beverages we buy, which drives us toward looking into more responsible farming, local sourcing, low-carbon, efficiently routed transportation, lower-emission refrigerants in transit, less packaging... Some of the tech we need just doesn't exist at scale or at a feasible price point, which is where collaboration comes in even more strongly around innovation."

The scale of the challenge can sometimes feel overwhelming, but Juliane Caillouette Noble, managing director at the Sustainable Restaurant Association, points out there's nothing wrong with starting small. "You have to remember at a time in which that's so much cost pressure on hospitality businesses right now, the ‘low-hanging fruits' of scope one and two emissions might have large upfront capital investments, but they're actually investments that would generate returns very quickly. Because the more energy efficient you make your business at a time when energy prices are soaring, the quicker you are going to be moving costs out of your business.

"That's not a bad thing. By doing that and having those savings, it then frees up the ability to make deeper investments in things like supply chains which are going to be harder to tackle."

Clearly there is a huge level of interest in addressing issues from across the sector. As Johnny McCreesh, senior project climate manager at Net Zero Now, points out: "More than ever, customers and employees are searching for restaurants and bars that have a proven track record on climate."

There's no question around the scale of this challenge, which is why collaboration will be so vital if the sector is to hit its targets.

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