Zero Waste Trainer training video

0:00 Welcome everybody! It's really nice to see you here at our seminar on sustainable solutions for cafes   0:06 and restaurants in cutlery and tableware. 0:09 I'm really happy to have you here, that you're interested in a topic. 0:13 And first of all I would like to get to know you a bit so can you just say a few words about your business 0:19 and if there's already something that you do in sustainability. 0:24 Hello! My name is Kadi and I'm in takeaway food business. We make the best burgers in town, so  0:31 you definitely tried them, you couldn't forget and we're also basically the greenest burger place in town.  0:37 Because we were the first ones to take use the biodegradable boxes for takeaway burgers.  0:46 Hi everybody! I'm Tamara and I own a chain of cafes in across the country. 0:53 We make good food but we pride ourselves especially in the coffee we sell. 0:58 Recently we have made the thermo coffee mugs that have our logo on it and we sell it to our customers. 1:06 And when they come with them it's obviously a more eco-friendly choice. 1:11 We're also looking into options to change our tableware and cutlery for takeaway food for bamboo or wood alternatives. 1:22 Hello, I'm Grace. I have a catering company, the best in town. 1:27 We have a really wonderful clients wanting really different events, so we have really wide specialization. 1:37 And we have a lately switch to biodegradable tableware. 1:42 Previously we had plastic but now we have this lot more eco-friendly solution 1:49 Yeah well first of all it's always great to get to know about new food places so I'll definitely try   1:55 your burgers and your coffee and I'll keep you in mind for my future events. 2:00 I'm happy to know that you already have thought about it, that you already taken some steps that you want to improve. 2:07 My first question to you would be - what makes those solutions sustainable that you mentioned?  2:13 Well, as we use those biodegradables. So they come from natural materials, they biodegrade, so it's great I think. 2:23 Yeah, I mean we're basically saving the world's oceans and all the kind of fish who is eating the plastic yeah, the plastic tide. 2:33 Yeah it's correct that you kind of focus on plastic because this has been the wider communication   2:39 you know the turtles but you mentioned the plastic being the the main issue here.  2:44 But what we know now from the wider research on environmental impact is that   2:52 it's not the plastic, the material itself which is the main problem here. If you think about it  2:58 what do you think could be the main issue? 3:02 Could it be that actually it generates waste still? 3:06 How could it? And it can't be the plastic. 3:10 It can't be recycled maybe? 3:12 I can't understand that point because it will disappear by decomposing, isn't it. 3:22 The waste is, you all have some points here, and the waste is one of the issues but it's   3:29 not just the waste there's a larger topic in here and maybe it's easier 3:35 if you try to look at what actually makes the environmental impact of those things to have a better understanding. 3:41 So let's look at all the options that you mentioned here. 3:44 We have the plastic which is the option that you have, we have the biodegradable plastic 3:56 which is a different kind. and then we have that the thermo mugs 4:02 that you used right, which are made from steel. 4:09 The customers can reuse it for maybe years to come. 4:14 Yeah yeah so that's like, if you would say that the options that you mentioned, you have the biodegradable and steel mugs 4:20 what's their difference? 4:21 So this as I said the steel ones the customer can come with it like every day for maybe years 4:31 and then if I'm gonna give a customer coffee in a biodegradable cup, then it's just used once. 4:37 Yeah but you have to wash them, I mean there's this element of the washing. 4:41 The water use and the chemicals. The mining, I mean steel, it's really environmentally heavy like production. 4:50 Yeah but if you wash in the machine, it's also more environmentally friendly because it takes less water. 4:57 Not everybody has a washing machine at home. 5:01 But I still think plastic is worse because you have to take the oil. 5:05 Okay I'm writing here you have the mining, we have the washing which has a big difference if it's done manually or machine.   5:11 If you have a cafe you usually have machines that you can use them. We have the plastic waste, 5:16 are you mentioning oil. Yeah I think it's really bad so for me plastic is still worse   5:22 than washing. But for biodegradable you need land to grow the biomaterial. Okay so we have   5:29 OK, that's different natural resources you choose. Yeah, you can do that organically. 5:34 I have read something about it yeah. Natural resources. But no waste I think isn't it?  5:41 Regarding the waste how do you, um what happens with your waste? 5:45 Well they're a little bit taken away just, waste company. 5:49 I was told the biodegradable boxes we use decompose in 40 days, there is no waste.  5:55 Yeah they disappear. Do you know what is needed for the decomposition to happen? 6:00 No I don't. I mean it's a waste management business, the customer takes their waste and   6:06 drops it somewhere wherever they ate and then it's the waste management company that deals with it obviously. 6:12 This is also unfortunately the case what the waste management company 6:15 actually the company who sold you these dishes what they often don't talk about is that the biodegradable   6:23 plastic uh it doesn't just decompose in a pile of waste uh it needs to be collected separately   6:30 with organic waste and it needs to be taken to a composting company who composed it so it has   6:36 to be actually collected separately. How do... What happens with your biodegradable waste? 6:44 Well my company doesn't collect them separately, they all go in same pile actually.   6:52 Yeah so the waste company actually don't separate them. Once it's mixed, it's mixed. 6:56 I feel betrayed! 6:57 And then it's taken the landfill so in reality it happens. It's the waste as everything else the biodegradable plastic. 7:05 If it would end up in the ocean, it would stay there just like regular plastic. So this is one side of it. Anything else you feel like   7:14 do you want to make a prediction what do you think has the biggest environmental impact of  these. 7:19 Well just based on what I heard now it has to be biodegradable plastic. 7:25 I think it's plastic, I mean it's still oil and biodegradable, it's just... the fossil is definitely more. 7:33 All those turtles and everything 7:34 that will be yeah so I think also that biodegradables as we see that waste. Waste it's bad but.. 7:41 You also said that steel and mining and the washing 7:44 True! It actually could be the same. 7:47 Are you ready to see the results based on analysis? Surprise us! 7:51 So this is a report that I can show you later. So this is a scientific analysis that you can see the details 7:59 What? What do you see here? A lot of questions. 8:04 So actually what you actually wanted us to see is that steel is still the best solution? 8:12 Well first of all biodegradable is the worst as I said 8:18 but what makes steel also better than the other solutions is that it's being used more than once.   8:26 Yeah when I look at it, five used steel is as bad as plastic actually, so yeah if you have new   8:32 mug every month, it's a problem yeah. So the point is the more you use it, the better, isn't it?  8:40 Maybe you can also thought about, I mean you can use the plastic and biodegradable also  8:44 I don't know, 25 times. And that's what I'm thinking it's why couldn't you just be reusing plastic   8:49 and why are we then banning it and and how is the I, how, why is biodegradable than even considered as   8:58 a greener option? I'm very confused! 9:00 OK, you had several questions. First of all, you proposed that maybe we can use the plastic several times. 9:05 What did you said have you tried using the .. 9:08 Actually no, I have catering company. They get so ugly, I know it's I have tried. 9:12 How durable are these plastics, biodegradables? 9:15 Even if they last maybe some particles come into the food 9:19 steel actually looks nice and lasts a lot. And then you had a question like why are they on the market. 9:25 Which is an excellent question I've been asking the same thing myself. I don't know why are they allowed 9:31 if they are not actually treated any better way and they are not actually a greener solution. 9:35 So this is maybe a question to regulators and yeah this is a very valid question. 9:41 Well what I'm seeing here is that yes the biodegradable very questionable but I don't think it's that much about the material 9:50 but it's more about how many times we use it and the single useness of it. 9:56 Uselessness! Yes, exactly! Very well put. 9:59 So reuse should be made cool actually in my company. 10:04 In fact there are this is steel and but there are also like alternatives, there are plastics   10:10 also which are more durable. This can be used as a material. Steel is best in the sense that it is   10:16 most durable and you can use it the longest but uh yeah in terms of maybe price and other options   10:21 there are more than just the steel as a durable option. 10:26 Are you sponsored by steel company? 10:28 I'm not. That's what I'm saying that they're not just steel, there also other options. 10:31 But it is questionable I mean my clients, they are price sensitive, the things I  10:38 sell, and there's many packages a day that I use, I have no control over where they go   10:47 um also my customers prefer biodegradable because they see it as a greener option, so  10:54 I'm very confused here and like what then should be the solution for my takeaway  business 11:01 I just shifted to a very green solution and now what I see is 11:10 I have been making investments into a very wrong solution? Is there a chance that this   11:17 chart could be wrong or changed? Unfortunately most of the data supports this but all your   11:24 questions are super good, super valid and they all need to be tackled and first of all it's not your   11:30 not your fault that you made the choices because like we said they've been marketed super well   11:36 but if also the customers start learning that they're not so good then maybe they might also   11:40 start preferring other solutions and all those questions about how to actually make it happen in   11:45 reality: the cost, the management, the organization - all this we can tackle this and this is what we're   11:51 gonna tackle in the next part of our workshop um just after we come back from the coffee break.