Our chocolate may not be high on the list of our customer’s food waste culprits; it’s so delicious, it never sticks around long enough to get wasted. But, inevitably in a company that makes around 300 million chocolates a year, sometimes things go wrong behind the scenes. Food Waste Action Week is a moment for us all to reflect on how we can help in the fight against waste. Hotel Chocolat has some surprisingly ingenious systems in place to reduce food waste, as Sustainability Executive Georgia McIntyre explains.

Where does food waste occur at Hotel Chocolat, and what do you do to reduce or prevent this?

“The biggest cause of food waste in our business comes through the cleaning of the pipes that shape our chocolates. Some of the liquid chocolate gets stuck or coats the pipes. When we need to manufacture a new line, the pipes need cleaning through. All the chocolate stuck in the pipes could easily go to waste.

Our solution is to flush the pipes out with cocoa butter. The flushed chocolate is no longer fit for our premium products. But it doesn’t go to waste. We work with a company that turns food waste into animal feed. So, all that chocolate and cocoa butter from the pipes goes into the farming ecosystem.

That’s how we address pipe wastage, but there are occasions where finished products don’t come out right. They might be misshapen or look wrong, so we created our Ugly But Good bags. Ugly But Good bags are only created when we make imperfect chocolates, which obviously isn’t something we’re aiming for, so they’re not always available.

Those are the biggest culprits of potential food waste in our operations, but there are lots of little ways wastage can creep in. We are actively engaged in monitoring and fixing this as best we can. We have hardwired this by signing up to the Courtauld Commitment, which is a pledge that aligns with the UN Sustainability Development Goal to halve food waste by 2030.

This is a long-term commitment we take very seriously. “

Where can Hotel Chocolat go from here to achieve that ambition of halving its food waste?

“It’s a difficult conversation because we’ve achieved pretty much zero food waste in production. Now our challenges are instore. Many of our stores will give in-date product that’s past its shelf life to charities, but we can do more for retail and café waste.

And we can still improve in production – for example, perhaps we will find a way to do something else with our production waste to make it suitable for human consumption.”

As Sustainability Executive at Britain’s largest independent chocolatier, you’ve got a deep and nuanced understanding of sustainability concerns. Do you ever waste food at home?

“Absolutely. It would completely wrong to pretend I don’t. There is an element of inevitability that some food will become inedible, and you cannot eat it. We’re all human, we all make mistakes, we all forget about things in the fridge. But I would say that I waste much less than I used to before I became aware of the issues.

Every time I realize I’m close to wasting food I see all those food waste figures flash through my mind. It impacts my thinking when I’m shopping and planning meals.”

What sort of food waste figures?

“Well, there are a few that stick in my mind. All the food waste in the UK could fill Wembley stadium 8 times, every year. From the floor to the brim… Edible food. It’s kind of crazy when you try and picture that.

Globally, about 1/3 of all food is wasted or lost. That 1/3^rd contributes about 8-10% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions.

If food waste was a country, it would have the 3^rd biggest carbon footprint after the US and China.

That’s food waste from the start of production to end-user consumption; from things like damaged crops, wastage in transport and in the retail chain through to what gets wasted at home.

The bit that shocks people is the edible food figures. Every year in the UK, we waste about 6.6 million tonnes of edible food, solely in people’s households. That wastage could feed so many hungry people.”

How does it shape people’s behaviour to be made aware of the scale of the problem through things like Food Waste Action Week?

A lot of people don’t really realise their own waste until they see these figures – ‘it’s just one thing’ is contextualised and we start seeing things as part of a whole, larger problem.

There are other factors, for example we need to lose our attachment to ‘Best Before End’ dates, because we have become too reliant on packaging and numbers over our own instincts – does it smell right, does it look right?

Some food does have to go to waste. Young children tend to waste a lot of food, you can’t eat food that has gone off. But it’s more about the proactive actions, the prevention – one of the easiest ways to go about it is to proactively plan your food around your shopping. So, you’re not just buying carrots for one meal and letting the rest of the bag rot in the fridge. Another one is making sure your fridge temperature is correct – so many people have it too low and food goes off too quickly!”

So, what is the correct fridge temperature?

“It’s 5 degrees or less. Also, the more you over-fill your fridge, the more the temperature rises inside. And don’t put hot food straight in the fridge!”

Any more tips?

“One of my biggest ones is freezing – so many more foods can be frozen than people realise, like cheese and milk. It will last so much longer and can be easily defrosted when you need it. Also, vegetables often last longer in water – carrots can last up to a week longer if in water.

There’s also importance in learning how to use scraps. Making soups out of chicken carcasses and the ends of vegetables rather than throwing them away. There are fine dining restaurants making high-end dishes with scraps, so there’s no reason we can’t as well.”

We’re all busy people… how are we meant to find the bandwidth to keep on top of our food waste? Aren’t we doing the best we can?

“It’s kind of a situation where we don’t really have a choice. Climate change has progressed so significantly, that thinking ‘oh well it’s just a bit of food waste’ isn’t really an option. It’s not that we need to be perfect, otherwise we’ve failed. It’s about starting slow and starting somewhere.

Doing something is better than doing nothing.

Of course, it depends on your circumstances and lifestyle. But why not make one night a week the night you consciously use leftovers for your evening meal? Often food actually tastes better a day or two after it was cooked – the flavours are more intense.

Subconsciously, we’ve grown up with these ideas about the way food should look. It’s a mixture of supply and demand – we want our fruit and veg to look perfect, or we think there’s something wrong with it, so the supermarkets often don’t even put wonky ones on the shelf. I now go out of my way to select the ‘ugly’ veg. it’s just as good and tastes the same. Natural food is not perfect.

We need to lose the attachment to our ideas of what food should look like.

Ultimately, if we all try and do something, whatever that is, we’re making progress. It’s a case of taking one step at a time.”

Love Food Hate Waste call these little adjustments we can make ‘Waste Hacks’ and encourage people to try and adopt one new one a week. Are there any more ‘Waste Hacks’ that Hotel Chocolat?

“There’s a Japanese term we have framed on the wall – ‘Mottainai’, which translates as ‘don’t waste what is valuable’.

We apply this thinking to the cacao pod itself, which provides us with the chocolate we love so much. We keep everything and reuse it all. For example, the cacao shells are used to infuse our Cacao Gin and Salted Caramel Vodka Liqueur.

On our farm in St Lucia, we use the cocoa pods left over after harvest for compost – it works really well.

This practice is also adopted by some of our island growers, and we encourage our farming partners around the world to do the same.

We’ve discovered many interesting ways of using every part of the cacao pod at Rabot Estate, our hotel in St Lucia. We’ll take the pulp from the cacao pod and use it in our Cocoa Bellini and Cocoa Martini cocktails, use cacao in various forms in cacao-inspired dishes for our restaurant – we also have Rabot restaurant in Borough Market which uses many of the same techniques – and we take the juice extracted during cacao fermentation and turn it into cocoa vinegar.

We also use leftover cacao nibs in Rabot’s Wellness Centre. It’s amazing what you can do with cacao!

There is always more we can do, for example we are also considering creating a separate compost bin for our kitchen and restaurant waste.

In a business of this size, it’s impossible to get it right all the time. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved to date, and we are always looking at how we can improve.”