Marketing and sustainable management consultant Ruth Loffa gives a critical eye to the Italian dining experience in the first of a series of global perspectives on sustainability we will be posting in  response to the launch of our Global Sustainability Rating. Buona lettura!

By Ruth Loffa, Gruppo Bio Trasimeno

Some might say I am a little difficult to dine out with, others might say I am impossible, personally I blame my father, he was trained in The Savoy Hotel, London and expected the same standards and service where ever he went. Some 30 years later an old school friend has still not recovered from an outing to a tea shop where my father lost his patience (yet again) as they served us cream with our tea instead of milk. He did have a point, we were in central Bristol and there was a Marks & Spencer food hall right next store.

You would think that this early initiation would have put me off the industry but I was a glutton for punishment and went on to train in hotel and restaurant management and then worked in restaurant management for many years.

Today living in Italy I find eating out has a different set of challenges, as Italians tend to ooze charm and are born naturals at taking care of diners bad food or bad service are rarely an issue, but with organic or sustainable restaurants being few and far between I personally find it very difficult to eat out. At home approx 80% of our food is organic and we have created a very self sufficient and sustainable life, therefore we like to continue this lifestyle choice when eating out. I don’t eat meat, something that features very heavily on nearly all Italian menu’s so that limits my choice somewhat and I even give the humble lettuce a cold shoulder these days as I am not so keen on the cocktail of fertilizers, pesticides and chlorine that are served up on the average commercially grown lettuce. And if I am asked ‘Would you like that warmed up?’ I always check ‘You won’t be using a microwave to do that will you?’ Like I say, I am difficult.

Italian food is steeped in tradition and asking Italians to give up or even cut down on their meat consumption is not an easy task but I think it’s something that they will have to come to. We all have to. It’s not an option, it’s a given.

Most restaurants don’t have the resources to pursue sustainable development independently and unless you grow your own, and fresh organic produce is hard to come by at a price affordable for most restaurants. Another issue is that Italy is very regional; you can have great projects going on in some areas like the BIO Distretti (Organic Districts) initiative. The first bio-district was launched in Italy in 2009 by the AIAB (Italian Association for Organic Agriculture) in an area inside the National Park of the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni. After 4 years, the Cilento bio-district now includes 30 municipalities, 400 enterprises, 20 restaurants and 10 tourist establishments that use local organic produce. Since the start the initiative has only been replicated in 3 other regions, so a long way from being a national standard that people can recognise and trust and this really is what is needed.

This initiative, like many of the ‘BIO Agriturismi’ (organic farmhouse holiday) who achieve their organic status because they produce certified organic olive oil, wines, honey etc, doesn’t take the sustainability or eco tourism philosophy any further. Issues like creating eco-friendly environments, reducing waste, recycling, composting, using biodegradable products when possible (it’s very common for Italians to use plastic plates at many social and community events as well as in the home) and conserving water and energy are not prioritised.

Despite Italy being the top producer of organic food in Europe we are very much at the beginning of the sustainability journey compared to other European countries.

What I do find encouraging is that through my work as a marketing and sustainable management consultant to the sector I am finding a lot of holiday destinations and restaurant owners who are very open to learning more. They know it’s what they have to do and believe it is the right thing to do; now what they need is the tools, structure and support. An internationally recognised standard like the new Sustainable Restaurant Associations Global Rating will certainly help in making this happen.

For further information contact:

Ruth Loffa

+39 075 830520

ruthloffa@gmail.com

skype – ruthloffa

Original Beans: Rigorously Sustainable / Luxuriously Chocolate from OriginalBeans on Vimeo.

ROARING ECOLOGY: A TRIP INTO THE WILD CACAO RAINFOREST OF THE BOLIVIAN AMAZON

It took three days from Europe to reach the Beni, the far Northeast of Bolivia. On the final leg of the journey we used? a four-seated Cesna that acts as an air taxi into this part of the Amazon where all roads end. Below, the landscape of the Beni opens into a dazzling patchwork of forests, grasslands, lakes and swamps, a million ways to define the colour green, with long silver stripes of standing waters. It’s summer, rainy season, and within weeks the Beni has been transformed from a bone-dry savannah into a lush, giant wetland. The region has been called ‘the backwater of backwaters’, poignantly so, given its extraordinary combination of wet and remote. However, among tropical archaeologists, nature conservationists and chocolate makers, the Beni ranks more like the Vatican. I can now spot the destination of my pilgrimage: chocolatale, a chocolate island. If ever there were a place to get stranded!

A day later, I thrash my way through the dense chocolatale rainforest. Swarmed by mosquitoes and butterflies, I am already bleeding from several scratch marks. Mythical, ancestral, original, and wild: how can I convey my experience of abundance while picking wild cacao fruits out of this rainforest and savouring that honey-ish, jasmine aroma that marks our own Beni Wild Harvest chocolate? With cacao-sweetened fingers I listen to the colossal orchestra of the rainforest, looking up as two large rainbow macaws cross the sky. Outside the camp in the jungle, jaguars stalk tapirs, and the giant sloth we saw earlier still hasn’t moved an inch.

So many creatures; so much diversity. This roaring ecology is how the world works. Any civilization that does not understand the principle – life is conducive to life – will not flourish. Archaeologists point out that the Beni must have been inhabited by a pre-Columbian civilization. These people created impressive earthworks and artefacts, some of which now serve as the foundation of this chocolate island. Over centuries, nature has reclaimed its wildness, but I’m left to wonder whether these people propagated fine cacao as part of a sustainable food culture. Did they make fine chocolate thousands of years ago? How did they view their role vis–à-vis nature, and did they consider themselves guardians or conquerors of the land?

As I’m sure you all know, Margaret Thatcher, co-creator of soft scoop ice cream, longest serving Prime Minister of the 20^th Century and the only woman so far to hold this position, passed away earlier this week. Her death has prompted political debate, outpourings of grief, hate, and reverence, and plenty of in between from political pundits, Facebook fiends and even football clubs. This is not the space for such commentary. Rather, I’d like to use this time and space to remark more generally on the realities of professional life as a woman in a male-dominated field.

Beyond what you or he or they may think about Margaret Thatcher’s political legacy, she undoubtedly paved the way for strong female leaders who have followed. Weeding through the polemic to the proselytising post mortem commentary, I came across these words from Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist Nicolas Kristof, which I think refreshingly avoid leaning to either extreme much of her coverage has been dominated by. “Margaret Thatcher, the tough right-wing prime minister of Britain who reshaped her country, is dead at the age of 87. My sense is that the first generation of women political leaders are often tough-as-nails conservatives, but they clear the way for other women of all political stripes. Margaret Thatcher, RIP. Your thoughts?”

So, my thoughts then. After reading Kristof’s words, I was immediately reminded of my time working as a chef de partie in a series of high pressure, unsurprisingly male dominated fine-dining kitchens in the US and the UK. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, “Gosh, being a girl in a kitchen must be hard.”

My response is yes, it’s hard in so far as being a professional chef is hard. Lifting giant stock pots filled with bones and litres of boiling broth is hard. Burning your hands every day on spattering oil all in the name of a perfectly seared fillet of black bream is hard. De-bearding pounds of mussels in ice cold water with your now burnt fingers is hard. Working 16 hour split shifts that never seem to split, 6 days a week, for months on end, is hard.

Was it hard because I’m a girl? Most definitely not. Female chefs may be outnumbered by males, but this statistic has no correlation with their capabilities in the kitchen. Yes, life in a professional kitchen is physical, but I’ve never met a chef that couldn’t find a way to cope- either by asking for help from their colleagues, or just grinning and bearing it. The daily trials and pains of being a chef are a way of life, burns and sweat and all.

This isn’t to say that I have never encountered sexism in the kitchen, or doubt from potential employers who can’t quite connect my CV with the fact that I’m a 23 year old girl from California. But that’s their loss, and has nothing to do with the actual demands of being a professional chef. Take away bigoted dinosaurs still clinging to their chefs hats, and stereotypes about gender roles, and you’ve got a career that is, despite its drawbacks, creative, intellectual, constantly-evolving, and incredibly satisfying, whether you are a man or a woman. We work with some incredible chefs at the Sustainable Restaurant Association, and some of them happen to be women. Take Thomasina Miers, Masterchef winner and owner of Wahaca restaurants. Or Suzanne O’Connor, head chef at The Scottish Café & Restaurant. And Anna Hansen, head chef at The Modern Pantry. All fantastic leaders and business people, and only a few of the fantastic women we work with.

Now, I’m not sure if my thoughts correlate in any way to how Margaret Thatcher felt about what it was like being a woman in a male-dominated field. I like to think that she, along with other strong female leaders like Hilary Clinton, Angela Merkel or Julia Gillard, weren’t too concerned about their gender when running for office. I’ve received some distracting comments in my time in a kitchen, just as these women have had to constantly refocus debate onto matters of real concern from the ubiquitous and at this point, downright irrelevant headlines about being ‘a woman in a man’s world’. At the end of the day, I was in the kitchen because there was a job to do, a job I could do just as well as the man next to me.  Whatever you may think about Margaret Thatcher, her policies, her legacy, and all the rest, the fact remains that she demonstrated through the tenure of her time in office and the furor that has erupted since her passing, that she made an impact, one which transcended a biological fact over which she had no power.

By Hayley Morgan

@Hayley_SRA

hayley@thesra.org

What lies beneath the label? The other month, Tom Tanner commented in his blog, ‘whether its scallops sold as ‘hand-dived’ or ‘free range’ chicken, restaurants need to look beyond what it says on the tin.’ Personally, I couldn’t agree more. Sourcing, authenticity and provenance are certainly in the limelight now more than ever and clearly there is a requirement for restaurateurs to have a degree of confidence in their suppliers.

And in this instance ignorance is certainly not bliss, because a false claim or a product served without clear traceability can harm the credibility of your restaurant.

So what can you expect of your supplier, and what questions should you ask? Firstly you should consider a formal agreement with your supplier regarding exactly what you want; you may wish to define the controls you expect them to have in place and also any specific sourcing practices that you would expect them to work to. The majority of suppliers will work towards industry best practice, such as the British Retail Consortium Standards (BRC) or Safe and Local Suppliers Approval (SALSA), which go a significant way to providing confidence. However supplier integrity and a robust sourcing strategy are also vital – regular discussions with suppliers will help to provide the confidence you need.

It is perfectly reasonable to challenge a supplier’s traceability because it is your reputation that is on the line. There is a legal requirement for ‘one step forward, one step back’, but any credible supplier should have the ability to trace to a field, a flock or a herd, for example. This should be a practice that they are used to, and as a customer this is not an unreasonable demand. In fact, a proactive, credible supplier will welcome the opportunity to prove the robustness of their system.

So, how can you do this? If you were to provide a ‘use by date’ from a pack, a batch code or the date on an invoice when you received the product, the supplier should be able to provide the traceability of the product. This should be in a timely manner and four hours is generally accepted as reasonable. Reality is that this rapid response may be critical if your practices are challenged during a food safety incident, such as an outbreak of food poisoning for example.

But, as well as having confidence that the supplier can effectively trace the products origins, are you confident that they can also supply you with exactly what you require? Is the provenance you require really being met and does this match exactly what you are declaring to your customer? Is the lamb really ‘Pyrenean milk-fed Paulliac lamb’ as declared on your menu or from elsewhere? Is the asparagus you serve really ‘English’ and grown in the ‘Wye Valley’, or is it air-freighted from Peru? And would your kitchen staff know the difference? What is the supplier’s relationship with their farmer? Are they buying direct or through a wholesaler and is there an opportunity for product to be tampered with? With regards to seasonal products, can the supplier provide a calendar of what they are sourcing and when? What is the contingency if the product if not available for any reason and does the supplier have the ability to notify you if this is the case? Where does the alternative product come from when you have declared it British and bad weather stops play? How does your supplier challenge their supplier to prove robust sourcing and what evidence can they provide?

Food labeling can be complicated, and a credible supplier can support and advise. Shell eggs, for example, have to be individually labelled, but the ‘FR’ code denoting France on the shell, can easily be misinterpreted by the uneducated as ‘Free Range’. Your supplier should be able to provide evidence and reassurance of origins.

As a supplier to a large number of SRA Rated restaurants, we are keen to ensure that we can provide sourcing plans for all products we supply. A live database of over 3000 products can be cross referenced against the ordering profile of a customer, and seasonal changes or specific certification for the product, such as ‘Red Tractor’, can be provided. Not only do we know where the products we supply have come from, but we can also give a good indication of where they will be sourced over the next six months. At Reynolds we have the benefit of agreed long term contracts with suppliers, which ensure that traceability can be more effectively managed than if we were to ‘spot buy’. It also means that we can agree the planting of sufficient crop with a supplier to provide continuity.

There is advice out there. Consultants specialising in the area can offer this, but by having a good relationship with your suppliers, they should be able to provide you with the confidence you need to protect your brand.

As the SRA award winning Mexian street food group Wahaca adds grasshoppers to the menu in an attempt to get customers thinking about exploring new food sources, we chat chapulines with their Marketing Manager, Oli Ingham.

We like trying new things at Wahaca, or more accurately nudging our customers towards trying new things. So adding the Mexican delicacy chapulines (that’s grasshoppers to you and me) to the menu at The Wahaca Southbank Experiment for a month to see how they go down is a logical and fun step. It’s not just because they’re one of our favourite dishes to order when we’re in Mexico, but it’s also a great way to get people talking about entomophagy (that’s insect eating to you and me).

As the global population grows and pressure on our already strained food systems increases, many experts feel that us westerners are going to soon have no choice in whether we join the 80% of the world’s population who already regularly eat insects as part of their everyday diet.

Our new dish, Chapulines Fundido, takes grasshoppers cooked with lime and chilli and sautés them with shallots, garlic and smoky chipotles, then blends them into a salsa, and tops them with gratinated cheese. A little like a grasshopper fondue, perfect for scooping up with corn tortillas.

For our month long trial, sadly we haven’t found a more local source of this slightly niche ingredient than a cooperative of farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico, so our supply chain won’t make for a long term menu item yet, but our hope is that by using this test to prove their popularity in the UK, we can justify a local farm, and perhaps one day locally sourced British grasshoppers will be a reality.

The dish has already proved popular, with around 3 times more of them heading off the pass than our other monthly specials, and it has raised interesting questions around why we don’t wolf them down already. The thing is, eating insects is not really that different to eating shrimps or prawns but it’s just not in our psyche.  Whether chapulines will continue to appeal to our more adventurous Wahaca customers will be an exciting test, but for us just getting people thinking about insects in another light is a great step in the right direction and hopefully one that will change our eating habits forever.

We’ll be keeping a track of their popularity on twitter, asking customers to vote using the hashtags #ChapulinYES or #ChapuliNO, so please do come and try them and let us know what you think.  So far, nobody has voted no! Check out our Facebook and Like us for updates on grasshoppers and everything else Wahaca.

Chapulines Fundido, priced at £3.85, will be available until mid-April at the Wahaca Southbank Experiment, on the terrace underneath Queen Elizabeth Hall alongside Waterloo Bridge. Anyone wanting to set up a grasshopper farm in the UK can contact Wahaca via ola@wahaca.co.uk.

Delicious coffee doesn’t have to have to come at a hefty ethical cost. Sustainable hot drinks pioneers Cafédirect share their top tips to making sure that the coffee you purchase benefits everyone along the chain – including the drinkers who will get a tastier cup as a result:

1) Look for third party certification
We believe that certifications like the Fairtrade mark should be a starting point for brands, not an end goal. Nevert

heless, an independent certification will ensure that the coffee meets certain standards for social & environmental impact. At Cafédirect we think that the Fairtrade mark is the top standard, but others exist (e.g. Rainforest Alliance, Utz Certi

fied, 4C and more), so do a bit of research to find one that’s best for you.

2) Look behind the label
If you have time, look into your coffee supplier’s actions. Do they take full responsibility for the whole of their supply chain, ‘from crop to cup’, or just the parts that they are in control of? How much do they actually do to support growers and can they offer 100% traceability?

3) Organic Vs non-organic
Most third party labels will cover environmental sustainability as well as social welfare but, unless you have a lot of time to dig into the details, organic coffee is still the best overall assurance of environmental sustainability.

4) Consider your role
Do you do all you can to help make the supply chain as sustainable as possible? Through extensive research we know that the largest chunk of the carbon footprint of a cup of coffee is generated at the point of service (boiling a kettle / running an espresso machine etc). That’s why we designed the free ‘EcoToolkit’ [http://www.cafedirect.co.uk/foodservice/ecotoolkit] online tool, that enables venues to measure their sustainability credentials and get advice on how to improve (and provides offers from partner companies who can help). Overall, you want to make sure that buying coffee isn’t an anonymous transaction – transparent, sustainable coffee suppliers will go far in enabling you to link your customers to the passionate people who grew the coffee at origin!

How to make the perfect (which includes most sustainable) chips? Who better to ask than the proprietors of two of the UK’s most sustainable chippies, Calum Richardson of The Bay Fish and Chips, Scottish Sustainable Restaurant of the Year and Danny White-Meir of Enochs Fish and Chips, Welsh Sustainable Restaurant of the Year.

First up – choose the right potato. Calum generally uses the Markie. He says it’s all to do with the soil. Too wet and the potatowill be too starchy and contain too much sugar. Danny at Enochs says it’s got to be Maris Pipers which he sources from Lincolnshire.

At The Bay, National Fish and Chip Shop of the Year, Calum would ideally source his spuds locally, but says Scottish soil is not suited to growing them. As he has to ‘import’ them, Calum takes measures to reduce the environmental impact and has a whole lorry load delivered which his supplier then stores. They are then delivered to the restaurant three times a week along with the batter flour – thereby reducing food miles.

Every day Calum and his team check the oil to ensure that the fat is breaking down properly. The potatoes are then thoroughly washed to remove more sugar and starch before being cooked at 180 degrees C. They’re also thickly cut to ensure they absorb less fat, making them healthier. On the subject of health, Calum extols the virtues of the humble chip reminding his customer that a portion of chips contains more vitamin C than an orange. The old fat from the fryer is collected and sent to make biodiesel.

Meanwhile, in Llandudno Danny insists on frying his chips twice – ‘so they are crisp on the outside and lovely and fluffy in the middle’. And, in terms of the oil – its sunflower – low in saturated fat and high in Omega 9. Enochs has been sending its waste oil for recycling to be made into cosmetics, but are now stockpiling it and will soon be running their new shop vehicle on it. Out of the frying pan into the van!

It’s so hard to ignore the hundreds of jokes that have been doing the rounds when writing anything about the horsemeat scandal, but, I shall do my best.

Putting the horsey hysteria to one side, the simple truth to emerge from the last few weeks of rabid headlines is that consumers’ desire to know the provenance of their food isn’t just some bourgeois luxury. Whether it’s a budget ready made lasagne or a £30 restaurant steak – the expectation is the same – if the label says it’s beef, then the diner wants to know it is.
While the expensive steak would appear to be a world apart from the bargain basement lasagne, there are similarities. It’s clear that some very large food companies have been hoodwinked by their suppliers, and they are not the only ones to be inadvertently offering their customers something altogether different from the advertised product. As part of its Sustainability Rating Survey the SRA’s assessors contact suppliers to confirm the sourcing information provided by restaurants. A number of SRA Member restaurants have been surprised to discover all is not as it seemed. What they thought was free range, turns out not to be.

There’s almost certainly no skulduggery involved in these cases, just miscommunication. But it can leave the restaurants vulnerable. More often than not the problems arise when the restaurant and its supplier have no formal written agreement, don’t talk on a regular basis and the chef hasn’t struck up a close working relationship and visited the farm. That last measure won’t always be feasible, but the first two should always be a part of any good partnership between producer and customer and if restaurants want to be confident in telling their customers about the provenance of the food they are serving them, then they are essential.

The chances of horsemeat inadvertently finding its way into the restaurant food chain are slim – about a 150-1 shot (sorry succumbed to the horse jokes eventually). But whether its scallops sold as ‘hand-dived’, ‘free range’ chicken or ‘sustainably sourced’ palm oil, restaurants need to look beyond what it says on the tin.
Butchers are reporting a significant upturn in business since horsegate broke and it is possible that there could be a genuine upside to this scandal as consumers demand more information about where their food comes from and producers and suppliers enter a new era of transparency.

]]> http://www.thesra.org/dont-be-a-chicken-when-checking-your-beef-isnt-horse/feed/ 0 http://www.thesra.org/hosting-a-sustainble-event/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hosting-a-sustainble-event http://www.thesra.org/hosting-a-sustainble-event/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:12:15 +0000 Ed http://www.thesra.org/?p=14630

With a spectacular view of St Paul’s Cathedral, the now half-frozen Thames, and Raymond Blanc OBE himself, 120 guests were treated to drinks, debating, and fine-dining at our second annual Sustainable Restaurant Awards on Monday 4 February 2013. And in true SRA style, we were committed to providing it all sustainably.

Large-scale events such as these inevitably come with excess, both good and bad. We hoped to have an excess of good wine and good fun. What we hoped to avoid was an excess of waste, stress, and unnecessary fluff.

So no giant vases of hothouse flowers. No gilt-edged invitations, or from-frozen canapés. Instead, a seasonal menu prepared by innovative chefs (namely Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons own Adam Johnson and Kush Bhasin, Bruno Loubet of Bistrot Bruno Loubet, and Agnar Sverrisson of Texture) that featured portions and flavours guests had no trouble finishing. A drinks reception hosted by Greenbox Drinks and Norfolk Cordial - who both produce in England using local ingredients and minimal packaging. And red, white, and sparkling wines, provided by Raimat, a family-owned winery in Spain that upholds sustainable viticultural practices throughout the estate.

Securing sustainable food and drink were our first and most obvious steps. As an organisation that works daily with restaurants and suppliers who challenge themselves constantly to source and serve the best, it was easy to ensure that everything edible would meet our standards. Food? Drink? Done.

Then came the tricky part. What to do about invitations, décor, linens, and unpleasant but unavoidable bins?

As lovely as a beautifully printed invitation can be, we decided to email and call our guests instead, which spared both unnecessary waste and expense. On to décor, fresh flowers seemed the obvious choice and they tie in with the whole eco-friendly aesthetic, right? However, these innocent looking blooms can have a damaging environmental impact. Beyond the fertilisers and pesticides required to keep insects and unsightly diseases away, many popular flowers must be flown overseas from warmer climes, or, if grown more locally, raised with constant artificial light and heat that can lead to staggering energy waste. As we approach Valentine’s Day, a study quoted in Scientific American estimates that approximately 9,000 metric tonnes of CO2 will be created to produce the millions of roses that will be purchased for the holiday. While there are florists who offer organic and seasonal bouquets, we decided to get crafty instead, and make reusable paper flowers that guests could take home in their recyclable Vegware goody bags (stuffed with Montezumas chocolate, Delphis Eco products, and coffee from Cafedirect). These flowers were set off against tablecloths and napkins courtesy of The London Linen Group, who have made significant investments into ensuring their water usage, carbon footprint and packaging use are as eco-friendly as possible.

With more and more boxes ticked, we got down to the nitty gritty - bins. Food waste is an issue which the SRA is immensely passionate about and has made significant efforts to reverse with campaigns like Too Good Too Waste. Unsurprisingly, we hope to create as little waste as possible, and are confident that our chefs’ efforts will be enjoyed to the last micro pea shoot. However, total avoidance of waste is impossible, and luckily for us, there are disposal methods out there that mean it can be dealt with responsibly. With help from Paper Round’s zero-to-landfill service we sorted, separated, and composted all of our waste, so it could be sent to a waste-to-energy plant and generate electricity. One important tip we learned: be sure to brief your staff about where and how to dispose of everything as soon as you can, as these systems can often be unfamiliar and confusing at first.

We hope that you may have learned a few tips and tricks about sustainable events planning, or at least gained some insight into our Sustainable Restaurant Association Awards. Careful planning and a little creativity can go a long way in ensuring that your event matches your ethos.

By Hayley Morgan

Paper Flowers- In a few simple steps

Whether you are planning a company lunch and desperate for a centrepiece, or are bored on a rainy Sunday morning, try making these paper flowers. They’re surprisingly simple, look like you tried really really hard, and require no watering- hurray! Via http://www.auntpeaches.com/

Step 1: Gather your supplies. You will need coffee filters, straws, green painters tape, acrylic paints in the colours of your choice (I mixed pink and yellow to create a range of shades), and a large plastic container. First, add a few blobs of paint to your container and dilute with water until the consistency of milk. Be sure to mix thoroughly until everything is completely smooth.

Step 2: In stacks of about 10-15 filters (this is not an exact science!) dip each bundle into the paint solution, squeezing out excess paint throughly. Add different colour paints and more water to create a range of hues.

 Step 3:   Hang each stack to dry. If it starts hailing golf balls, as it did the day I cleverly decided to start this project, don’t panic- appreciate the slightly mottled effect it will create, and re-hang them on your radiators. In fact, hang them on your radiators to begin with, as they will dry much faster.

Step 4: Once completely dry, cut into a spiral shape. Don’t worry about perfection, just keep the loop a few centimetres   thick until you reach the middle. This seems like it would take forever but I promise, it doesn’t.

Step 5: Starting from the centre of your spiral, begin folding and pleating the filter onto a strip of green tape, leaving a centimetre of free space at the top. Again, this looks somewhat complicated, but it really isn’t- the loops and folds will form your petals, so just make sure they are quite big and flat so they will yield realistic flowers.

Step 6: You should end up with something that resembles this. Now stick one of your straws at one end, and begin wrapping until you see a flower appear. Don’t worry if your first one (or few) looks ridiculous. This is the kind of thing you have to do a few times to perfect your technique

Step 7: Look at that! A flower! Now wrap the sad naked straw/stem with some more green tape.

Step 8: If you are going to make a few hundred of these, as I did, now is the time to start watching that series or film you haven’t found the time to see yet.

Step 9: Arrange and admire

Tap water is often the favourite option amongst the SRA team, and our friend Giles Coren spearheaded a campaign ‘Ask For Tap‘ a few years ago. But the full debate encompasses bottled vs filtered vs tap water. And within those categories there are sub-categories to consider. ‘Ethical’ bottled water such as One Water and Belu who fund clean water projects in Africa, or locally sourced and bottled water (Hildon near London), or what is sometimes incorrectly called ‘Organic water’, which is water bottled from springs that run under organic certified land. Then in filtered water there are a variety of different methods including osmosis, which is claimed to produce incredibly pure water, but on the downside wastes numerous litres for every drinkable litre produced. Our office has a filtered water machine by Housewater, which works off our mains supply and I certainly prefer it to what comes out of the tap.

So am I anti-bottled water? No. In a restaurant I will always ask for tap if they don’t have filtered but I don’t object to bottled water, particularly for sparkling water if that’s your thing. I can understand why people enjoy San Pellegrino or Badoit with a great meal. That said I have been really impressed with some sparkling filter water systems such as Housewater and EcoPure and am planning a blind taste test with the team – I’ll keep you posted.

What I hate is asking for tap and getting bottled. Recently this happened with a prospective member and I was given Norwegian water. It was perfectly nice, but I’m not sure I would have noticed the difference if it had been in a glass. I should be glad it didn’t come from Fiji.

My favourite is sitting down in a restaurant and being given a jug, carafe or bottle of tap or filtered water without asking. This happened on a recent trip to the new Hawksmoor Air Street which prompted this blog. If that happens I really don’t mind if they stock bottled water be it ‘ethical’, local or alpine. Just not Fijian water.