In December 2011, as part of the Sustainable Fayre project, the Kindling Trust in partnership with Climate Friendly Food delivered the final report for 20% and 41% carbon reduction of menus to Manchester City Council.
The work involved 5 days to do a complete carbon audit of primary school meals purchases with over 7000 individual items analysed. Then after this a further 20 days examined a baseline menu, that is typically used in the primary schools using Saffron software. The 20 day baseline menu examined main meals, pasta bar, jacket bar, salad bar, traditional puddings, “lite” desserts, bread lines, fruit platters. This involved looking at every individual ingredients (over 2000 in total) for carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) contribution. CO2e looks not only at carbon dioxide but also the more potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide which are significant in farming. Each primary school meal generates approximately 1.35kg CO2e from field to plate.
From that the carbon auditors looked for ways to reduce this figure by 20% and 41%. Excitingly, the 20% CO2e reduction menu was offered for 7p under the baseline for ingredients even though it involved more organic ingredients. This is predominantly because meat was reduced and field vegetables increased in line with the recommendation of the 2009 Report How Low Can We Go?. However, there is a kitchen staff time cost to taking local organic vegetables straight from the field in terms of preparation. At present, vegetables often arrive pre-diced in modified atmosphere packaging. The additional staff time was not taken into account.
When the first draft of the 20% CO2e menu was presented three recipes were rejected – cottage pie, beef cobbler and chilli con carne because the taste of the brown lentils were not acceptable to children. In the second draft existing child tested recipes were used from Schools Food Trust best practice recipes, Jeanette Orrey writer of “The Dinner Lady” and lead of Schools Food Trust, Jamie Oliver and Annabel Karmel. They fitted really well into the carbon reduction formulas and achieved value for money whilst hitting the nutrient standards laid down by the Schools Food Trust and tested on the Saffron software.
Manchester Fayre have now taken the formulas into their own recipe development team to develop brand new recipes which fulfil the criteria. They are the first caterer to being doing this, as far as we aware, and the partnership of Sustainable Fayre look forward to hearing about the new recipes in the new year. Furthermore, in striving for the 20% CO2e menu, providing that 50% of the ingredients are locally sourced, Manchester Fayre would achieve a Gold Award from the Food for Life Partnership and could potentially drive hundred's of jobs in the local farming economy. This is great news for the sustainability of the region and ahead of when the new Government buying standards are brought in 2012.