The café at the Burren Nature Sanctuary tries to stay as sustainable as possible, with freshly cooked food and local produce. We have an environmental policy for the visitor centre with targets for reducing waste, water and electricity use, and have won awards including a Silver for Sustainable Tourism and an Eden Award for Gastronomy as part of the Burren Food Trail.
Every year we compare our data to the benchmarks of the year before to see if we have hit our targets. One area we struggle to improve on is electricity use. The major drain on electricity is washing up. We have tried to tackle this in various ways over the last five years...
We have a sign at the sink 'Save Water'!
Our kitchen porters are trained to fill the sink with hot water to wash in and try and rinse with cold. Although they do this as much as possible it is very hard on the hands and also not good for dissolving butter on plates which can clog the grease trap and cause chaos. At 25 litres a minute going down the drain, with the kitchen tap full on, this is a major problem for electricity and water use.
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When the farm shed was converted to a visitor centre we fitted an air to water heat exchanger. It gathers latent heat from the air, multiplies it and uses it to heat the building and hot water. Although initially an expensive investment, with good insulation, the building has required very little energy to heat.
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The unit uses a tiny bit of electricity to run, it's along the lines of running a fridge in reverse. It heats the underfloor heating system and provides hot water for the taps. The air to water system stores heat in a huge tank but when demand is high for hot water it kicks in an immersion heater to compensate. It copes very well except for one huge demand- washing dishes. Because the demand is constant during the day once the unit it is under pressure it never gets a chance to recover. Ideally, especially in the quiet season, washing up should be done in batches; cooking utensils should be washed in the morning for half an hour or so and then plates, glasses and cutlery later in the day. In reality the hot tap is on, rinsing items on and off all day and the washing machine is constantly fired up.
We are launching an experiment to try and reduce hot water use...
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We are introducing palm plates for cakes and scones. We will also use compostable greaseproof sheets on timber boards for our lunches. We will hold coffee cups and water glasses in the sink for one wash up at the end of the day in the quiet season.
We have to balance the energy savings from having less wash up with the carbon footprint of the palm plates as they are imported from India. We googled hard to see if there were any Irish or European alternatives but it seems there are not. Research undertaken by Claudio Fritz Vietta http://www.dw.com/en/how-eco-friendly-are-leaf-plates/a-37204699 shows that no suitable European leaf has been found as yet.
For every 100 kilos of modern freight shipping 40g of Co2 is produced. The gross weight of a pallet of palm plates is 8.08kg. This contains 100 cases of 24 8" square plates. We have ordered 4 cases, this works out at about 350g of Co2. A tree can offset 20 kg of Co2 per year so if we planted one tree for every 5,700 plates used it would cancel it out. Thinking along these lines no-one really questions where all there yoghurt pots etc come from but of course all that plastic is being shipped from China and India adding to the problem.
We also must consider the manufacturing process. From research the plates are hand pressed in small micro businesses that support communities using a product that is otherwise waste. Hopefully this is the case. Watch this interesting process by clicking on the link below. It is impossible to find out how much energy is used in the process. It seems to be a wood/gas fired steaming process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR6AX5ciuqM We also have to consider the aesthetics. We wonder if people will enjoy the experience of eating off palm plates or find it unappealing?
What about the cost? The cost for the initial 100 sample plates is €30. This seems a lot but will have to be compared to hot water savings. With a larger order the price will decrease. On a very quiet day, we are spending an average of €6 per day on hot water and on a busy day with about 60 covers we are spending about €15. Over the course of a year €1,739 against €1,846 so it will cost a little less or break even and hopefully less resources will be wasted.
Also, how will they compost? Will they break down quickly or will we live with a mountain of palm leaves for years to come?
We will keep you updated on the success or failure of the palm plate experiment.
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