Gourmet Catering & Events Celebrate Sustainable Gastronomy Day, tomorrow Tuesday June 18th
The company has 100% renewable energy, projects and research on food waste, proximity products, diffusion of sustainable gastronomy and innovative management of food surplus
Gourmet Catering & Events celebrates Sustainable Gastronomy Day (June 18) with a list of good practices focused on companies in the sector and based on the company’s own experience, which has various pioneering initiatives focused on a more environmentally friendly production, awareness, and measurement and Improvement of food surplus management.
According to the UN on its website, sustainability implies “carrying out an activity without wasting our natural resources and being able to continue it in the future without harming the environment or health”. In this sense, a more sustainable management of gastronomy in events necessarily involves paying attention to the origin of the ingredients and their traceability, to the promotion of the use of renewable energy, to the reduction of food waste and the dissemination in the sector of practices with the environment ENVIRONMENT.
“The great managers of events must be an example of good practices in terms of sustainability and in the same way that we innovate in gastronomic matters, in organization or decoration of spaces, we must be innovative in the implementation of a more environmentally friendly work system that can have continuity in the future”, he assures Corinna Heilmann, Head of Gourmet Business Development.
IMPORTANCE OF THE PRODUCT
“We base our menus on local and seasonal foods and work with local and ecological suppliers”, shares Javier Garcia, chef and head of the Gourmet Catering & events. “We have also been working for a long time with vegan and vegetarian options, but above all in a concept of biodiversity focused on minimizing environmental impact and ensuring a healthy diet at events.”
Renewable energies
The use of renewable energies is another of the differential points when carrying out a sustainable management of a company with a high gastronomic profile. “Our production center has 192 solar panels covering an extension of 496.20 m2, and offers a rated power of 100 kW and capacity to produce 133,297 kWh/year”, indicates Heilmann.
In addition, in 2022, the company invested in a sophisticated system of water treatment plants, to guarantee that it is dumped into the sewerage network with the minimum possible impurities.
Surplus monitoring
Undoubtedly, one of the benchmark initiatives of La Gourmet has been the implementation, in April 2023, of a system for monitoring donations of its food surplus through a digital platform based on blockchain technology and developed by the startup naria, which ensures traceability and interconnects all agents in the food chain.
Since then, the Catering Production and Innovation Center, which has an area of more than 1,600 m2, uses the NARIA software to record production losses in good condition and notify the Food Bank so that it can distribute it among the different entities to which caters.
Since April 2023, when the company began the registration of donations, 3,892.74 kg of food have been donated, which represents 9,268 servings of food and a saving of 9,731 kg of CO2.
impulse to the Mediterranean product
Last December, the publication “Grading Flavors: 360º in Mediterranean Gastronomic Experiences”, prepared in conjunction with the Palacio de Congresos de Valencia, the World Center of Valencia for Sustainable Urban Food (CEMAS), the Lluis Alcañiz Foundation of the University of Valencia and other institutions, won the “Oscar” of the gastronomy books, the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
The book brings together recipes with corresponding nutritional values, y It shows how 360º gastronomy is integrated with the One Health concept (“One Health”) in the field of meeting tourism, a global strategy that seeks to increase interdisciplinary collaboration in the care of the health of people, animals and the environment, to develop and implement Programs, policies and laws for the improvement of public health.