Christmas tree alternative!

Monty by our Leylandii Christmas tree...

I got an email asking me whether I thought an artificial Christmas tree or a natural one would be the greenest option. I said that I thought an artificial one - made from plastic - would be better environmentally, if you re-used it year after year. But I've never gone that route. (I've now discovered that a plastic one only wins out if it's used for 20 years or more - and that most people only use them for 6!)

Up to now my best year has been with a tree that I re-planted in the garden. But not all of us have the space for this on an annual basis.

If you are going for a Christmas tree you should certainly recycle it afterwards. Most local authorities now have facilities for doing this. But you need to get round to disposing of it pretty soon after decorations come down or you miss the boat. I have to admit that I've had trees shedding their needles on my compost heap well into the New Year.

But this year is different. I was wondering if I could avoid having a tree altogether. My three boys are aged 14, 12 and 10. They had other ideas. So I suggested to my eldest son that he should take the others into the garden and get some twigs and things and make their own Christmas tree.

My vision was for a twiggy sculpture draped with Christmas decorations. But they did better than that.

We have a rather horrid Leylandi hedge that's grown out of control. My neighbouring farmer has promised to cut it in February, so we can rediscover the view. Meanwhile, the boys have lopped off a couple of tops and tied them together. They now stand decorated in the corner and look pretty much like any other Christmas tree.

I think this is the greenest Christmas tree option of all....but I'll have to decide how to recycle it at the end....

Yo Sushi is Wasteful

It’s a shame there’s not a Yo Sushi at Waterloo because that’s my regular train station and I’m a fan. If I’m going through Paddington I often perch on one of their stools and help myself to something exciting from the conveyor belt – and at airports too.

If you’re interested, it’s not too difficult to find out that Yo Sushi have a policy on the sustainable sourcing of their fish. They don’t sell bluefin tuna, which is one of the most endangered species on the planet but they admit that this is partly due to its stratospheric price tag.

There’s plenty of yellow fin tuna though. Apparently most of it comes from the Maldives and Sri Lanka, where the fishing methods are more sustainable than in other parts of the world. Yo Sushi’s fish suppliers all follow recommendations from the Marine Stewardship Council about which fish is sustainable and which should be avoided.

Their nutritional guidelines seem pretty good too. Raw fish and rice are healthy foods and not very fattening. If you want to check there's a little table at the back of their menu booklet, telling you how much fat, sugar and salt is in their food.

And I discovered that their policy on freshness and hygiene was rigorously enforced, as you’d expect. Staff have to change their plastic gloves, wash their hands and throw away food that’s been on the conveyor belt for too long. Every dish is given a time stamp. Once that expires food gets tipped into the rubbish containers. Some dishes are only given an hour, fish and rice generally get two and salads three hours.

And that’s what made me wonder about how much food was wasted. A lot, it turns out. I asked the chap behind the counter what proportion of food he thought was chucked. He said it could be as much as a third. Yikes! More is apparently thrown away at off-peak times because the conveyor belts must be kept stocked but less is eaten.

I’d noticed before how much packaging there was. What I hadn’t noticed was that none of it was recycled – all the food and other rubbish was thrown into the same bin.

It’s all very well sourcing your fish sustainably but if huge quantities of it end up in the bin that’s not sustainable at all. And I have to admit that I thought the staff training on eco-issues could be improved. I asked an employee, who’d been working at Yo Sushi for 15 years about the sustainable fish policy. He didn’t know what ‘sustainable’ meant and told me instead about how fresh the food was.

Yo Sushi needs to go much further than just ticking the box about their fish suppliers. It should audit its systems to minimise waste, separate what it throws away and train staff on environmental issues that are relevant to the business.

The carbon impact of wasting food is huge – even worse it it’s fish or meat, so fast-food chains should make this a priority issue. I might be an unusual customer in some respects but I suspect that I wouldn’t be the only one interested to hear what they’re doing on this front. I’d also like to know if they’ve looked at other issues like air freighting food and energy efficiency. I couldn’t find anything on their web-site, so I suspect not.

My final verdict on Yo Sushi? Thumbs up for healthy food but thumbs down for a healthy planet.

Originally written for the Food Ethics Council (www.foodethicscouncil.org) magazine by Julia Hailes who is a member.