A circular approach

Apricity opened earlier this year to fanfare for its low-waste, green approach to refined cooking. Nicholson says that keeping plastics out of her restaurant has meant creating a network of suppliers that are open to integrating reusable packaging into their service, rather than finding alternative materials for single-use items.

Meat, fish, milk, herbs, and even washing-up liquid are brought to the restaurant in metal containers, which are cleaned and returned to the supplier so that they can be used again and again. Where possible, the restaurant orders produce in bulk, which arrives in Paper sacks. Where plastic cannot be avoided – like in the case of piping bags and vacuum pack bags – it uses reusable silicone and bioplastic.

In the kitchen, everyday plastics like cling film and plastic bottles are removed completely through simply not using them, while staff wear reusable aprons made from recycled plastics. The interiors, designed by sustainable hospitality design specialist Object Place Space, use repurposed materials such as recycled-content tiles, chairs made from recycled Coca-Cola bottles, and oyster shell light fittings.

“As a business owner, you have to do everything you can to make it as easy as possible for everybody. It’s not a linear process, it’s very much circular in trying to support each other to do better,” says Nicholson, who is also a board member of ReLondon – London’s Waste and Recycling Board, which works on improving waste and resource management in the city.

Chef Matt Kammerer of Harbor House also says that weeding out plastic is about creating a wider influence across the industry. “As a leader and a chef, training chefs to work without cling film has more impact than the activity itself. It goes out into the world when they leave Harbor House. They’re thinking, ‘well Harbor House doesn’t use it, I don’t think I need to use it’.”

A similar approach to Apricity’s model has been adopted by all of the restaurants PlasticFree has spoken to.

Smaller and local is better

Angela’s restaurant founder Lee Coad is looking to take this circular approach one step further. After noticing that negotiation with suppliers was more difficult when it came to ingredients used year-round, such as onions and lemons, he decided to take on a farm from the local area that will directly supply produce to the restaurant and cater to its needs. He tells PlasticFree that this will further help eliminate supply-side plastics and reduce potential waste by creating a closed-loop system.

“I genuinely think that with every element of a restaurant, whether that’s produce, interiors or everyday items, the closer to home you get them, the easier it is to weed out plastic,” he says.

Inspired by the global bestselling book Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, Coad has taken a hyper-local approach to running his business. A pillar of the community in Margate and the wider Kent County, he works with a range of local designers, farmers, local businesses, and organisations to bring his space to life. Almost all interiors in the restaurant – and the recently opened private rooms above it – are either made from recycled materials or arrive second hand. Food dishes derive from locally sourced ingredients, and some of his containers even come from the ice cream shop next door.

Today, a localised approach seems to be fuelling a range of low plastic waste restaurants. Harbor House sources all of its ingredients from its immediate surroundings and nothing is brought into the restaurant that cannot be found in the local area. This means that pretty much zero plastic comes into the restaurant unless it is a conscious choice. It is also small, making it possible to keep its operations lean and sustainable.

“We’re a unique restaurant because we start from scratch every day,” says Kammerer. “We don’t have the massive prep load that other places have, we cook for 18-20 people a day and there’s no food at the end of the night. We make exactly what we need.”

In New York City, the recently launched restaurant Scen has similarly partnered with a local farm to reduce supply-side issues. “We were finding as a new restaurant that we didn’t have a lot of buying power to influence suppliers,” says Maximilian Koenig, the founder behind the restaurant concept that looks to make plant-based food more readily available to everyone.

“Because we’re able to design our menu with that farmer, he’s able to deliver produce when it's ready and when we need it, plastic free and in wooden containers. Then we handle all of the food in the kitchen with Aluminium pans and containers,” explains Koenig.

These farms don’t always succeed in providing everything a restaurant needs, however. Scen abandoned avocados completely after realising it couldn't find a supplier in the US that produces them in a sustainable way – or without being wrapped in plastic. It’s a big move for an eatery with a fully plant-based menu, and highlights the challenges restaurants still face when attempting to run a sustainable operation.

Room for innovation

When it comes to weaning plastic out of their restaurants, these owners and founders describe having taken the responsibility to make a change because they believe it is the right thing to do. But with an – at least initial – economic cost, how can more restaurants be encouraged to take the same path?

Restaurants need systematic support to keep their restaurants plastic free and waste free. The challenge is for designers and governments to think about how better waste systems can be built across cities, what packaging solutions can be created for those year-round kitchen essentials, and how to work better together at local, national, and international levels.

Nicholson suggests one solution could be a universal set of metal bottles, boxes, pots, and containers that suppliers are made to use. “Then there would be no issues with disposables or having lids and tops that don’t fit,” she says. In this universe, all dirty containers would be collected by an agency that would wash, sterilise, and resupply them to suppliers for refill. The state of Oregon in the US has implemented something similar within its brewing industry, whereby all brewers use the same Glass bottle for their product. These bottles are easily disposed of across the state, collected by the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative – who runs the statewide bottle deposit system – and cleaned before being returned to breweries to be refilled.

Koenig suggests city-focused guides that introduce business owners to the most sustainable method of processing waste locally, whether plastic or otherwise, so that everyone can stick to the script. Meanwhile, Coad hopes for polystyrene fish and meat boxes that are insulating and biodegradable, and Kammerer says vacuum pack bags are proving notoriously difficult to replace.

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