Sustainability
With Earth Day coming up, we thought it would be a perfect time to share how we are doing our bit as a small business to give back to the community and Our Planet...
Here at Mesa, one of our most important values is to be as ethical as we possibly can. We are no stranger to the negative effects that hospitality has on the environment, which is why we are continuously looking for ways to carbon offset, give back to the community, and lower our impact on the environment. Our goal is to ensure you have the best event possible, comfortable in the knowledge that you are working with a sustainable, caring business.
To give back to the community, we have partnered with Fareshare, a UK charity that re-distributes surplus food. Although we rarely have leftover food ourselves, we are committed to donating 12.5p to Fareshare per guest at every event we cater, and give our clients the opportunity to match it. Every 25p donated, equates to one meal given back to the community through FareShare. If all of our clients booked in 2021 and 2022 agree to the charity donation, we can expect to provide FareShare with over 8,000 meals to distribute back to the community. This will increase as we get more and more bookings in the years ahead.
We have also partnered with The Forest of Avon Trust, in an effort to offset some of the carbon emissions inevitably created whilst running our business. The trust is part of England’s Community Forest Network, that is about to start a 4.5 year reforestation project. The UK has less tree cover than most countries across Europe, so by focusing on the long-term care of trees, looking after local community woodlands, and initiating tree planting projects, this charity hopes to address that imbalance. For every event, we will donate the equivalent of two trees to The Forest of Avon Trust, which will be planted in the correct place, using the correct type of tree for that area and continually cared for to help them survive. In 2021 and 2022, we expect to donate enough to plant and care over 200 trees!
As well as our charity donations, there are a few other things we do to keep our business as sustainable as possible. Using quality ingredients is very important both to us, and our catering partners Thali & Pieminister. We always use produce of the highest standards; locally sourced, free-range meat, dairy & eggs, seasonally & locally sourced fruit and veg where possible, and deforestation free ingredients. We are huge advocates of supporting local, independent business, and do this wherever possible! For our events we aim to use recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging, with a continuous reduction of single use plastic. There are so many great eco-friendly packaging options out there now, there’s really no excuse anymore! We are also happy to have just launched our plant-based menus and have replicated some of the options onto our standard events menu to reduce our meat offering.
As a business we are always consciously looking for more sustainable ways to operate and adjusting our practise in line with this. If you know of any other changes we could make, then we would love to hear from you.
FIND OUT MORE:
https://www.mesacatering.co.uk/sustainability
