Ten bakeries have pledged to reduce food waste at their sites as part of the Real Bread Campaign’s No Loaf Lost commitment.
No Loaf Lost was unveiled in January to encourage small, independent bakeries to reduce the number of surplus loaves they produce. The guide is divided into five sections to help them monitor surplus and implement a reduction plan.
More than 125 copies of the plan have been downloaded, according to the Real Bread Campaign, and the following 10 SME bakeries have signed the pledge:
- Abundance Bakehouse, Cambridge
- Amazing Grains, Olney
- The Badger Bakery, Woking
- Hobbs House Bakery, Bristol and south west
- Love Bread Bakery, Huddersfield
- Pain de Dilay, Nouvelle Aquitaine, France
- Rugby Real Bread, Rugby
- Stoneham Bakehouse, Hove
- The Billowing Loaf, Gloucester
- Yellow Door Deli, Portadown
The Campaign will check in with each bakery after six months for a progress report. By committing to the pledge, bakeries are encouraged to appoint a champion responsible for loaf surplus, measure the weight and value of it for two weeks and then implement an action plan to reduce it.
As part of its existing Flour Footprint initiative, Hobbs House Bakery has implemented several No Loaf Lost action points, which the Real Bread Campaign said proved that surplus and waste reduction practices can be built into a successful bakery’s business model.
These include working towards only making loaves to order, offering catering customers the option of receiving bread frozen to defrost as and when they need it, and redistributing or repurposing 100% of surplus bread including as toast and an ingredient in dishes on its café menus, passing on to local charities that can use it, donating it as animal feed to local farms, or giving it to staff.
Subscribers to British Baker can find out more about donating surplus to charities here.
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