Food is an important part of the experience in a lot of Sawday’s places, but it’s also a huge driver of waste and consumer of energy. Anything you can do to reduce the impact of the food you provide is a positive move. In many cases, it also means using local, high-quality supplies that will only make guests love their stay more, as well as supporting your community.
Information for and from guests
- Make sure you let guests know what you provide as standard. Little surprises are great, but if you’ve left bread and milk for guests and they turn up with their own, either yours or theirs are probably going to go waste
- Give them information on where to shop plastic-free and well-sourced in your area
- Encourage them to shop at grocers or farm shops instead of supermarkets. You can even send them a “menu” and get the shop in yourself before they arrive, although this is of course a lot of work if you have multiple properties or rooms.
- Find out and consider people’s dietary requirements. There’s no point leaving sausages for vegetarians, or a Victoria sponge for vegans! Feel free to send us the cake instead.
- Think about moving towards veggie/vegan provisions, which have far lower impact globally
- You could even make a zero-waste shop on site, if you have the space, stocking dried goods or local fruit and veg that guests can buy and use without having to purchase a whole pack/bunch/punnet.
In your place – little things
- Provide local produce to reduce food miles
- Keep it seasonal where you can
- Make sure your tap water is safe for drinking so that guests don’t need to buy plastic water bottles
- Try not to use coffee pods, opt for a cafetiere with freshly ground coffee instead
- Supply reusable shopping bags and containers for guests to use during their stay
- Stock reusable beeswax film instead of cling film
- Use refillable and plastic-free toiletries and cleaning products
- Use home-compostable bin bags
- Order in large quantities from people such as Essentials or straight from the supplier, and consider local and ethical suppliers. Read more on this in an article from Martha, owner of The Moon & I, a Canopy & Stars place.
In your place- Recycling and Rubbish
- Make it easy for customers to recycle during their stay by labelling bins correctly, making sure that they are accessible and that guests know where they are
- Do the same for any food waste
- Get composting – it’s the ultimate recycling. We love the Hotbin! Put all your food waste in one place and get beautiful compost in 3-6 months!
- Why not do a ‘Bin Audit’ for both your guest accommodation and your own home to see where your waste is coming from?
A final note
Please don’t forget to tell us your stories and let us know what works for you and what doesn’t. We love to learn from the experts and the more we hear, the more we can share with our community and keep driving down our overall emissions as a company.
Tessa Holmes
Sawday's Expert
Tessa is our social and environmental inspiration and watchdog. She's in charge of finding ways for us to extend our positive impact as far as we can, whether that's encouraging our owners to install EV charge points, upgrading our site's accessibility or raising the flag for worthy causes like Save The Oaks. Just to make sure she completely embodies the company's purpose, she lives in a yurt in Devon, helping out with the running of a social enterprise.
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