A hotel, a restaurant and a brand of spirits with an ecological conscience sign up for the protection of the environment with their proposals
The experts agree: the world of restoration has two pending challenges beyond being profitable by offering good gastronomy: the sustainability and the treatment of workers. And in the first case there begins to be examples of going in the right direction that point where the can go future of the sector. In this article we show you three: that of a hotela restaurant and one brand of spirits.
The hotel: Negresco
The cold meats and cheeses, the yoghurt mousse, the fruit, the pancakes, the jams… for the Sunday brunch are served in some wooden trays made with slats from recycled pallets that have been die cut to fit little glasses that used to be the bottoms of bottles of juices, beers and even Anís del Mono. These beautiful pieces are the work of the Italian Lucia Bruni (lucirmas.com), who has trained the El Celler de Can Roca team in its commitment to recycling wine bottles, which take on a new life in the form of glasses, for example. . ‘Upcycling’, they call it, because recycling goes up a notch when it comes to new pieces, really beautiful and unique.
The thing does not end there in the Negresco Hotel. Also cocktail glasses come from distillate bottles, many of which, whole, contain the osmosis water that is served at the hotel. In the future, they want reuse paper and table linen, and even organic elements such as coffee groundsa task Bruni is already working on.
“Our idea is that, within a few months, almost everything we use will be recycled“, explains Nuria Flores, marketing director of the establishment. For this, in the selection of material for recycling, they count on the Trinijove Private Foundation, dedicated to training and social and labor insertion with the aim of overcoming situations of social exclusion .
In its commitment to sustainability (he already looks Biosphere Sustainable Lifestyle environmental certificate and will soon obtain ISO 14001), not only helps to protect the environment by participating in conferences to cleaning the Collserola forest, the mouth of the Besòs and the Barcelona seabed of wastebut also cares about people, since they deliver food to soup kitchens in Barcelona.
The distillate firm: Torres Brandy
brandy towerswhich belongs to Familia Torres, one of the most ecologically conscious beverage companies in the world, set up the Torres Brandy Zero Challengethe first global competition for sustainable bar projects. The contest, held in Barcelona on March 30, welcomed seven finalists from different countries (Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Finland, Lithuania, Canada and Mexico) who had to show how to manage a venue with minimal environmental impact and create an innovative ‘eco-cocktail’.
The objective was to promote a change of mentality in mixology that put environmental commitment firstand therefore the incentive was very powerful: 25,000 euros to carry out the winning project and another 5,000 euros for those who have submitted it.
The judges valued projects that prioritize a low environmental impact through the use of renewable energy, design that respects the environment, innovation and social responsibility. As regards the ‘eco-cocktail‘, was taken into consideration the use of local ingredients and seasonal products, waste management, taste, creativity and the technique used.The winning project was that of Giacomo Gianotti and his cocktail bar, Paradiso (Barcelona), chosen the best bar in the world in 2022 The World’s Best Bars: stood out for its comprehensive approach based on the management of the waste generated by the bar and the reuse of organic matter and plastic. The other finalists were Sergio Martínez (Mexico); Daniel Cronin (Canada); Sampsa Tukia (Finland); Brian Calleja (UK); Akvilė Bieliauskaitė (Lithuania) and Livio Morena (Italy).
The restaurant: Nectari
Few chefs in Barcelona are as aware of sustainability as Jordi Esteve (nectar). Obsessed with reducing the carbon footprint left by his business, plant trees via Tree Nation, a company that calculates how many to plant based on the visits that its restaurant website receives. At the moment, its forest, distributed throughout the world, reaches 269 trees, which represents a savings of 55.6 tons of CO2. He is happy: his restaurant has managed to be neutral because with his initiative he already compensates for everything that pollutes.
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Esteve put himself in the hands of an external advisor to see how to be as sustainable as possible, and thanks to this he has obtained the Biosphere Sustainable Lifestyle certificatein which you are not only required to be as ecological as possible (headlights, leds instead of halogenmotion sensors so that they turn on only when there is someone in a room in the premises) but socially responsible in aspects such as gender or racial equality in the workforce.
“I want to improve every year as much as possible. Now I have to finish a small orchard that I have”, says the cook, the only one in Spain that has a wine list with the epigraph IWAC (acronym for International Wineries for Climate Action, the association of wineries committed to reducing the carbon footprint to zero). The effort is paying off. And he gives as an example that his establishment, which is part of the Sustainable Restaurants Foundation, will receive a group of 60 people for an event next month who just wanted to go to a restaurant with the Biosphere Sustainable Lifestyle certification. “There is a tourism that seeks this, which is very new but in a few years it will grow a lot -estimates Esteve-. That is why we will see that many restaurants will work towards environmental certifications because customers are already asking for it“.