Mark Chapman, The Zero Carbon Forum: How to address the climate crisis, one hospitality business at a time

Last year, The Zero Carbon Forum set out its plans in the first-ever roadmap for the hospitality sector to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, funded by its 27 members and backed by UKHospitality and the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA).

We spoke with the forum's founder, Mark Chapman, to understand how the roadmap was created, what its conclusions were and how he hopes it will help the hospitality industry play a part in tackling the climate crisis.

One thing is clear to Mark, and that is that change will only occur when businesses take action: consumers' role, along with that of governments, is to support the measures taken by corporations.

“It needs to be business-led,” Mark said. “Businesses need to work out how they are going to decarbonise their operations. That’s the only way we’ll reduce emissions globally. That needs to be supported by consumers that then buy from those companies and award those companies that have clear and aggressive carbon reduction plans. Then it also needs to be underpinned by governments through legislation that then creates a level playing field. Encourage them to do the right thing.”

A RoadMap and a blueprint

Mark explained that the roadmap was the result of a year’s worth of work with expert consultants, where they did two key things: first, they worked out where the key impact areas of the community were; then, they broke these down into more specific items for types of businesses within hospitality to understand what the carbon footprint of a pub is versus that of a hotel, a restaurant, etc.

Then, they pooled all of the solutions their members had found to mitigate their environmental impact, and worked alongside experts and consultants to create plans for what initiatives certain businesses should look at.

The resulting document breaks down every step in the way to net-zero emissions for a business, explaining what carbon impact each initiative has, the cost of implementing it, and lists any barriers to implementation.

Ultimately, Mark believes that the plan could serve as a blueprint to be used across other industries spanning the globe. “We want to be a game-changer," he said. "We want to be the best industry collaboration of any industry anywhere so that we can approach the key steps and we can repeat these with other industries globally.”

“We really truly believe that we can tackle the climate crisis through the work we are doing through the Forum with our members because we can showcase it to the rest of the world.”

The changes needed

The roadmap outlines three areas of emissions that restaurants can address: operational emissions, supply chain emissions, and consumer emissions.

Operational emissions are split into three further categories: energy, water and waste.

Each requires slightly different methods to solve. Operational emissions are a good place to start, as they can be altered with simple, often free or very cheap changes, such as not leaving things on standby and making sure the taps aren’t left running unnecessarily.

"Operators can save thousands to their bottom line per outlet by being more energy-efficient, by wasting less water and [producing less] waste,” Mark said.

Secondly is the supply chain, the most pollutive part of the hospitality industry - responsible for 70-90 percent of its total emissions. Any changes here will likely be more expensive, as they require purchasing changes. To put it simply, local produce tends to cost more than foreign produce.

But solving the issues with the supply chain is not just about buying local, it is also about asking suppliers what it is that they are doing to lower their impact, and about lowering the impact of transport in general.

Finally, we have the consumer emission. With this, Mark takes a less direct approach. In this area, he argued, businesses need to promote positive activities and influence people to make changes in their lives through the food the industry produces.

The idea is that if you create good food sustainably, you will influence consumers to also start being more sustainable with their food. “I really don’t believe it’s as hard as we think it is to engage consumers,” he said.

The difficulties

According to Mark, there are four major barriers to implementing net-zero carbon emissions, the first of which is motivation, which is becoming less and less of an issue, Mark said, “In the last three years I’ve seen a huge increase in motivation from operators.”

The second difficulty is knowing what it is that needs to be done, and that is where the Forum’s roadmap comes in. It bypasses the issues of not knowing what to do by giving people all of the information they need to implement changes.

The third issue is cost - arguably the biggest limitation to any such endeavour. Mark hopes that thanks to the Forum, there will be larger-scale movements that will help lower the prices of the changes.

The final issue is apathy, as people often believe that if other countries - like China, or Russia - aren't doing their part, our own efforts are pointless. 

But, Mark argued, “we need to give them something good to copy. If we show them how to do this, I have no doubt it will put this in at pace.”

In Summary

Mark's hope is that despite all of the challenges that lie ahead, the Forum will provide a support network for the industry to make the changes we need to see. And he painted a great picture: if all of the Forum's members were to move to renewable energy, it would save over half a million tons of carbon per year. Which is the equivalent of 45,000 households.