Recognising the green in Greene King; congratulations to The Best Sustainable Pub Company winners at The Publican Awards 2020
Greene King has been recognised by the pub industry as The Best Sustainable Pub Company at The Publican Awards 2020. The award is presented to the company that demonstrates a significant effort to reduce its waste, including; reduction and redistribution of food waste, reduction of energy, plastics and single use items.
As one of the UK’s largest pub companies, Greene King is in a position to have a major impact with its green initiatives. In the past year, it’s diverted 11,674 tonnes of food waste to an anaerobic digester to generate energy, converted 3.3m litres of used cooking oil into biodiesel, recycled 20,156 tonnes of glass and 761 tonnes of plastic, and saved almost 2.5m pints of water through a self-supply water licence.
About £280,000 was saved after an independent audit into energy use at 444 sites identified key action areas, including the use of LED lighting, improvements in kitchen behaviour and adjustments to operational setting controls. Some 40,000 LED lights replaced halogen bulbs back-of-house in managed pubs, reducing energy consumption by a third.
The PLA straw scheme, introduced in partnership with SWRnewstar in 2018, has turned 12m biodegradable straws into compost.
Last September saw the group hold a Food Waste Awareness week across its pubs to inform staff about the scale of the issue around the world and why Greene King needs to play a part in helping to reduce it.
As well as promoting Too Good To Go at Farmhouse Inns and many Carveries, doggy-bags were trialled by Greene King to cut food waste in 2019. With an average of 196g of food being taken away by customers who used the doggy bags instead of being thrown in the bin the scheme is now being rolled out.
A video and on-site communications programme was produced for teams in kitchens to educate staff on; what happens to the waste once it leaves the pub, what can be recycled, how to recycle it and the benefits of recycling.
Team members are kept updated on these and other initiatives through in-house communications, including the Kingdom app and fortnightly Greene Screen video bulletins. Greene King’s ongoing commitment to inspire teams and push the sustainability programme means there will be more exciting projects on the way in 2020.
