What they do:
The View is a café located on the Gower Peninsula, overlooking Rhossili Beach. The cafe is already doing a lot of good things to minimise food waste, support young farmers, and local food production.
Circular Procurement and Practices: Reducing waste and strengthening community
Challenge / Project:
Dealing with large volumes of plastic packaging generated through procurement of food products in a high turnover cafe, with very small bins...
Solution / Approach:
The View already has lots of initiatives and processes in place to support sustainability but its staff aren’t always aware of the good work they are doing. ARCS support started with its bespoke Circular Hospitality Training session to help join the dots around sustainability language, celebrate the work already happening, and identify actions to take moving forward. The project is also working on the Cafes most pressing challenge, high volumes of plastic waste and inedible food waste in the summer. Investigating ways to work with suppliers to minimise waste like plastic mushroom tray and ice-cream tubs which are bulky and used at high volumes. And downstream to look at new opportunities to create community composting facilities in collaboration with other cafes and organisations in the area.
Impact:
• Increasing staff’s confidence in communicating different options to customers and future funders
• Celebrating the good work already happening
• Support the café's financial resilience by reducing waste and waste collection fees, potentially creating new revenue streams
• Increasing sustainability throughout the supply network and local area
Next Steps:
Procurement changes are in place, with a focus on local produce and recyclable packaging. The View is also exploring a community composting facility.