August 21: More to Sustainability than Buying Local

Restaurateurs committed to buying local food are contributing to an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable food system, says a University of Guelph expert on the restaurant business. But buying local is far from a complete sustainable approach to food service.

Bruce McAdams, a former restaurateur himself, said restaurants are generally far from sustainable operations. McAdams is an assistant professor in U of G’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, and oversees the Sustainable Restaurant Project — a research project that examines all sides of sustainability in food service.

The restaurant business is massive in Canada, McAdams told an audience of about 30 people at the recent instalment of the Campus in Community program, held at 10 Carden Street. An over $60 billion a year industry that employs roughly 1.1 million Canadians in about 70,000 restaurants, food service in this country has an enormous amount of work to do to become a sustainable component of society, he indicated.

McAdams also has some controversial ideas about the culture of tipping that surrounds the restaurant industry, and sees it as a negative part of an unsustainable system.

There is a lot wrong with food service, McAdams indicated. A single medium-sized, full-service restaurant — of which there are a number in Guelph — uses an average of one million litres of water a year, much of it wastefully.

A single restaurant wastes hundreds of tons of food every year. Recent research done by the Sustainable Restaurant Project found that an average of 12 per cent of meals ends up as plate waste. Well over half of the waste produced by an average restaurant is compostable food waste, and too much of it ends up in landfill sites.

McAdams projected an image of a McDonald’s happy meal — something he lets his son have once a year. The $4 meal came with a staggering amount of paper and plastic waste, including the plastic toy and the drink straw, which take hundreds of years to break down. As well, the meal was loaded with salt, he said.

With one in ten children in Canada now suffering from high blood pressure, and with a 20 per cent increase in Type 2 diabetes in children in the last 20 years, it appears restaurant food is playing a significant role in making our children sick, he suggested.

“Restaurants have an impact on the health of our communities,” McAdams said, “environmentally, economically, and socially.”

Read the full Guelph Mercury article