Brakes Becomes BII Sustainability Champion

23 October 2023

Brakes has been awarded the prestigious Sustainability Champion accolade by leading hospitality organisation, the British Institute of Innkeeping (BII).

The award recognises the work that Brakes has undertaken to champion sustainability in the foodservice sector across its three focus areas of people, product and planet.

Some of the initiatives that Brakes has launched include:

People

We are supporting our communities, donating the equivalent of more than 12 million meals with food redistribution partners such as FareShare and City Harvest. We also launched our own charity Meals & More, providing food and support to vulnerable families during the school holidays.

We’ve launched campaigns with our own colleagues focussed on physical, financial and mental health, with the latter seeing around 250 colleagues trained as mental health first aiders.

Product

We are focused on improving sourcing standards, being the first foodservice wholesaler to remove black plastic from our own brand products, improving recyclability and avoiding sending waste to landfill. We’re committed to reducing or removing packaging where possible, for example we’ve removed 5m tonnes of cardboard from our fresh veg boxes.

In addition, we’re focused on product quality, working with organisations across the industry, including MSC, where we were awarded Foodservice Wholesaler of the Year for nine consecutive years and RSPO to ensure that all palm oil in Brakes-branded product is certified.

We’re working with customers to support their journey to more sustainable menus, including a comprehensive new training programme, ensuring that sales colleagues are on hand to advise on more sustainable alternatives.

Planet

We’ve already cut our own emissions since 2019, driven by improved energy efficiency, solar installations, renewable energy and fleet efficiency.

We’ve been upgrading refrigeration units at sites, completed the installation of LED lamps and upgraded insulation to improve efficiency.

Our solar installations across the first two sites in the group are operational with plans to roll out three others in the coming year as we journey towards 100% renewable energy by 2030.

We’re leading the way on zero emission vehicles as we trial the next generation of foodservice delivery, with two electric 19-tonne multi-temp HGVs operating in our network alongside other smaller electric vehicles and cars.

Pete Statham, Head of Sustainability and Government Relations, said: “Sustainability is at the heart of our business values and we are delighted that the British Institute of Innkeeping has recognised this with this prestigious award.

“We recognise that there is still a long way to go, but we are committed to raising standards and caring for one another, which is a core part of Brakes, and our parent company Sysco’s values.”