Giving Compass' Take:

• Food Tank reports on the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s (SRA) push for restaurants to take sustainable measures in the U.K. such as tracking food waste, knowing their sources, and leading the charge for sustainability in food businesses. 

• What will be the biggest challenges for restaurants in the U.K. to face? How can other countries in Europe follow the same measures to protect our environment and shape the food system?

• Here's an article on the need for a sustainable food system in Europe. 

“Unless we fix food, we cannot fix climate change,” says the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s (SRA) most recent report. In its Tastiest Challenge on the Planet, the British non-profit urges food businesses in the United Kingdom to lower the environmental footprint of their meals and pull their weight in tackling climate change and shaping consumption trends.

So far, about 7,500 food businesses across the U.K. are stepping up their game working with the SRA to shift the way they operate, produce, and serve food. “We define what sustainability means for them, audit how well they’re doing, inspire them to do more, and then reward them for doing so,” Andrew Stephen, CEO of SRA, explains to Food Tank.

The report calls for reducing meat from menus, eliminating single-use plastics, and preventing wasted food—the biggest social and environmental villains in U.K. hospitality, but also with the biggest potential to improve. But SRA members—from independent cafés and highbrow restaurants to office and university caterers—have been acting on different fronts to solve their sourcing, social, and environmental issues.

Read the full article on the U.K.'s push for sustainability by Alexandra Popescu at Food Tank.