This, for us, is a special issue of Foodservice Footprint. It is our 2nd Anniversary Issue and whilst we still regard ourselves as in our infancy, it is hugely rewarding to see the strides we as an industry have taken in the last two years on the road to sustainability.
3 years ago when we started researching the viability of a project that would become the go to place for the foodservice industry on sustainable issues, we didnt know whether the industry was ready to debate these issues on a serious level or indeed whether there would be enough activity to substantively report on. Our worries were unfounded. The editorial team has been swamped from the word go as it becomes more clear, daily, that sustainability is rapidly becoming the industrys number 1 priority.
It is understandable for a cynical eyebrow to be raised at the more extreme claims of certain high profile climate bodies, however, the issue of sustainability is not going away and should be front of mind more than ever as our knowledge evolves.
Even after three years working on the subject of sustainability and after two years of editing Foodservice Footprint the books remain open for the best definition of the term sustainability. We have all been exposed to dozens of definitions some sound and some fairly wacky. However, I feel a recent lecture by Dr Daniel Pauley of the University of British Columbia laid bare the argument in the most beautifully simplistic terms. He argued that the definition of sustainability should be something that we could carry on doing forever without being detrimental to natural resource. He reasoned that we have been living off the Earths capital and not Earths interest for too long.
To my mind, this has got to be the best definition to date, but I hope there are many more to come!
It appears that broadcasting information in simplistic, bite sized, digestible chunks and challenging debate on this pressing issue is starting to pay dividends. One might argue that we are starting to see a higher standard of knowledge emerge as a result of this – a platform from which we can tackle environmental issues and matters of sustainability with ever growing confidence and knowledge in future years.
