Posted: 
24 January 2024
We’re delighted to announce that our Executive Head Chef Stuart Anderson has won Sustainability Champion of the year at The Greengage Sustainability Awards.
Passionate about providing excellent customer service to our clients and colleagues, Stuart was prized on his commitment for putting sustainability at the forefront of everything he does here at Ashorne Hill.
Having received multiple awards for encouraging key initiatives and making fantastic sustainability improvements at Ashorne Hill, Stuart was also recently awarded Guardians of Grub Partnership status– official recognition for all the brilliant work he’s doing to help tackle climate change by reducing wasted food throughout the business.
Find out more about Stuart’s key sustainability initiatives over the last 12 months below:
Reducing food waste: passionate about reducing food waste in the business. Stuart has introduced a scheme for staff to buy leftover food at heavily discounted rates which benefits the planet by reducing waste and giving staff access to tasty and affordable food, lowering Ashorne Hill’s carbon footprint. Within our first month of running this scheme, we have managed to save a total of 103 meals from the bin at an average of 25 meals per week.
We have also started working with local suppliers, reducing travel time, and supporting local farmers and food businesses.
Created a QR code digital menus – reducing paper usage by at least 60,000 sheets
Our very own Rum and Gin: Created by our Chefs at Ashorne and grown from our own botanicals we worked with The Warwickshire Gin Company to craft our own Gin & Rum.
We chose a local brewer, supporting a small local business while helping the environment by reducing the carbon footprint that would be produced by having mass-produced products delivered to us. With local breweries sourcing their ingredients and distributing products locally they have a much smaller carbon footprint themselves, but using what is already in the Ashorne grounds is an added bonus.
Reducing the use of single use plastics throughout the business: Stuart steered the group in reduction of single use plastics throughout our business. We’ve stopped providing plastic bottled water to clients and now provide refillable glass jugs and Vegware compostable cups. We also encourage guests to bring their own refillable bottles, reducing water wasted from discarded bottles and chemicals from cleaning.
Upgraded our garbage collection:
We have upgraded our garbage collection to a more environmentally friendly vendor, ensuring that all of our hospitality waste is recyclable. Every day, our kitchen staff audits the bins to make sure there are no waste disposal mistakes. We are currently experimenting with innovative approaches to discover applications for them before we throw any of our food away:
Eggshells – Our ground-down, dried eggshells are available for customers to take home and use as fertiliser. This is a cheap and often efficient method of enriching plants.
Coffee Grinds – Customers can take away and utilise the packaged coffee grinds as compost.
Juiced Lemons – Our juiced lemons are salted and sugared before being used as a garnish for fish meals or tagines.
Orange & Lemon peel – The dried peels of oranges and lemons are used as kindling in the Great Hall.
Vegetable Trimmings – In our soups, sauces, and stocks, vegetable trimmings are used up after being stored in the refrigerator.
Broccoli Stalks – Broccoli pakoras are made from chopped and shredded broccoli stalks.
Cake offcuts – For staff breaks, bowls of cake trimmings are set out.
Salad bar – We have also removed the salad bar from our restaurant, but the salad choice is still available to customers with the same selection of alternatives. This is one of our further initiatives to reduce food waste. This helps us limit the amount of food that is wasted while we eat. All of these changes will save 40g of food waste per person per meal and cut food waste by 10% per person.
