As a food wholesaler working with a wide variety of businesses covering retail, foodservice and often a combination of the two, we are well aware of our responsibility in shaping a food supply chain which is not only efficient, but that is also as sustainable and waste free as possible.

With this in mind, and having decided that this needed to be a key focus point for 2021, earlier this year we appointed a Sustainability Intern, Ruby Harlow, to review, implement and oversee our internal practices.

Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing regular updates on our work around sustainability within Curd & Cure (such as our recent launch of The Rescue Range) and we asked Ruby to tell us a little more about why fighting food waste and creating a more sustainable food system for all is important to her, along with a few ways we can all begin to do our part.

“I have always had a passion for food, encouraged through learning to cook with my family as a child, the joy of trying and cooking different foods while travelling and working in different hospitality jobs. I have developed a passion for sustainability, which influences how I try to make decisions which are better for the planet and the people around me. I always knew that I wanted to work within the food industry, but it was not until I got the role of Environment and Sustainability Intern at Curd & Cure that I really knew how I would fit into the industry. Having been born and raised in South East Kent, it is really exciting to be able to get more involved with the local businesses and be able make some substantial and long-lasting positive changes. 

Graduating from the University of Leeds last summer, in 2020, and having studied Human Geography which focused on the impact of geographical surroundings on the experiences of people; I often chose to focus my studies on food issues relating to inequalities in access to healthy and nutritious food. My dissertation focussed on the accessibility of households in Kent to food retailers which supply healthy and affordable food and identified the barriers which need to be targeted to overcome this. Access to food is a basic need and food inequality is unacceptable when one third of all food generated globally for human consumption is wasted. Reducing food waste can contribute to fighting hunger and food inequality but is also relevant in the fight against the climate crisis. Food waste is also a direct waste of the resources that were used to produce the food, including energy, water and land use. Research has found that food waste is the single most important issue that needs to be targeted to tackle the climate crisis. 

Since beginning my role at Curd & Cure at the start of this year, I have audited the business to identify where change needs to be made. Tackling food waste has been effective, redirecting and recovering waste at points higher up the food hierarchy. This has involved implementing Too Good To Go, selling ‘magic bags’ of short-dated stock to customers at a discounted price, increasing food donations to charities in the local area and creating a new soup as part of The Rescue Range, to recover stilton that would otherwise have been wasted. Recently I have been working on strengthening Curd & Cure’s core values, to embed this throughout the company and staff engagement, and writing up some of the processes and policies to communicate with our suppliers and customers. The diversity of my role has given me the opportunity to work with colleagues across all the departments at Curd & Cure and learn from each of them. I am looking forward to continuing this and seeing what other changes we can make together. 

Working at Curd & Cure has given me an in depth, working understanding of the issues faced within the supply chain of the food industry, and particularly those that have occurred over the course of the last year as a result in the ever-changing lockdowns and closure of retailers/hospitality sectors and schools. The new Stilton & Broccoli Soup we have launched as part of The Rescue Range is an exciting project where we have collaborated with two local companies, The Speedy Kitchen and Provenance Potatoes. Having rescued stilton from going to waste and surplus potatoes for this soup, we are now working on utilising further waste from our production department to create some new flavours. It takes 78 litres of milk to make one whole 8kg Long Clawson Blue Stilton Cheese. In rescuing 240kg stilton, we have saved not only 2,340 litres of milk, but also the resources that went into producing it, including the water and land use in farming the cows for milk. 

The current climate crisis is an issue that we are all aware of and urgently need to be addressing. Whether individual action really makes a significant difference is often questioned; however it is not about being perfect but making any small and substantial changes that will reduce your footprint. For instance, research has found that eating a vegetarian diet can reduce an individual’s carbon footprint by half, so just increasing the number of vegetarian meals you eat each week makes a considerable difference. Alongside individual action, it is essential that companies match these changes and reduce their often more significant environmental impact. My aim for Curd & Cure is to not only improve how the business operates through reducing waste, packaging and in distribution, but also to use our platform and resources at Curd & Cure to spread awareness and work with others to achieve a more positive impact. 

I encourage everyone to get behind The Produced in Kent ‘Change One Thing’ campaign and make one positive and more sustainable change to your habits. They Say Don’t Change for Anyone; – Produced in Kent

Quick changes:

• Increase the number of vegetarian meals you eat each week.
• Buy local and seasonal to reduce food miles.
• Bulk buy to reduce the amount of plastic you produce. – e.g. 5L refillable containers of hand soap, shower gels, washing up liquid.
• Reduce packaging by buying vegetables loose at farm shops or using the refill stores. Kentish Oil is bringing out a new refillable system that will be available locally in farm shops to reuse your own bottles.
• Swap to oat milk in your daily coffee. This reduces your environmental footprint as less energy and significantly less water is used in production than any other type of milk.
• Take the time to save your leftovers or save someone else’s by downloading Too Good To Go – Curd & Cure now have boxes available daily.