Ensuring that your restaurant is taking active steps to reduce its impact on the planet is excellent news for how potential patrons will view your eatery, and great for improving the environmental footprint of your business.

Discover our top tips on how you can not only satisfy your customers' taste buds, but their ethical values too.

Reduce Food Waste 

One of the most significant restaurant-related stresses on the environment is food wastage. The average restaurant can throw away up to 75,000 pounds of excess food a year, which has a considerable impact on the planet.

What can be done in your restaurant to avoid a bad reputation for wasting food?

• Be aware of your expiration dates, organising food within pantries and refrigerators with the closest 'use by' date first. Make sure your chefs are aware of this process, so they know to use food closer to expiring beforehand to avoid wastage.

• Managing your inventory with specially designed apps can help you organise your stock and help prevent over-ordering.

• Donate leftover food. Anything you don't intend to use can go to a better cause, rather than throw it away why not research your local food bank or soup kitchen that may benefit from your leftover food?

Water & Energy Waste

Promoting that you are an energy-efficient restaurant is an excellent PR-enhancement for your eatery. Although water may not be an issue in some places, it is still worth being conscious of your water waste.

• Get rid of bottled water. Offer an in-house water filter system or provide chilled tap water. Either way, bottled water in bulk is a big no-no for your environmentally-friendly restaurant.

• Water-saving toilets will reduce the amount of water wasted and give you relief from the financial flush.

• Solar panelling is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint and reduce your outgoings. Despite the initial expense, solar panelling ticks the environmentally friendly box, and can also cut your energy costs.

Packaging Perish

Plastic is the biggest bugbear for restaurants and food vendors. We all know the issues with plastic and its shadow over our planet's wellbeing. Reducing your plastic use in your restaurant will stand you in good stead.

• By avoiding heavily packaged food providers you'll see a fall in your overall plastic wastage.

• Takeaway your tubs. If you provide take out or leftover tubs, then try and consider the containers that you offer and whether or not they complement your company's values.

• Grow your greens. If you use a lot of vegetables in your ingredients, it's worth investing or experimenting with a vegetable garden which would ensure fresh food for your restaurant.

Energy-efficient appliances 

The food service is responsible for a considerable slice of the economy's energy consumption. An effective way to reduce this consumption is to invest in energy-efficient appliances.