Gal. The vegan croissant café also fights waste
13/08/2024
A vegan, specialty coffee shop that fights food waste every day, has opened in Anjos, Lisbon. Welcome to Gal. The team at Too Good to
The restaurant was awarded for its efforts to reduce the waste produced, as well as to increase reuse and recycling in all processes and functional areas of its activity.
Chef António Loureiro’s Michelin-starred restaurant “A Cozinha” was recently certified as Europe’s first Zero Waste Business restaurant by Mission Zero Academy (MiZA).
The restaurant successfully completed the MiZA external audit, showcasing its effective implementation of measures to minimize waste generation while enhancing reuse and recycling across all aspects of its operations. It received 2 out of the 3 available stars in the Zero Waste Business Certification program and will continue to pursue certification throughout 2023 and 2024. Zero Waste Business is a certification aimed at restaurants and the hospitality sector that wish to accelerate the process of transition to greater sustainability in their activity, committing to circularity objectives, implementation of waste prevention solutions, and circular economy best practices on a local scale. In Portugal, it has ZERO as a partner in promoting this program.
What’s sustainable about this restaurant
In the external audit process, a number of aspects were evaluated, including: the purchasing policy and the principles of km 0 cuisine, the relationship with suppliers and producers in the short agro-food circuit, and the constant dialogue with these parties to reduce packaging and optimize product transportation without jeopardizing the correct internal operation of the restaurant. In addition, a commitment was made to create a logistics system for transporting the food in reusable containers.
The space design incorporated the repurposing of old construction materials, the utilization of ceramic objects from local artisans, and the adoption of reusable cloth towels and napkins, eliminating the need for tablecloths. There is also a vertical garden that serves to supply part of the kitchen with edible herbs. The selective collection rates exceed 90%, while continuous monitoring of undifferentiated waste collection ensures ongoing assessment of certification implementation.
Since the beginning of the activity in 2015, the restaurant’s philosophy has been guided by the commitment to minimize the impact that its activity can generate on the environment, respecting the essence of the products, favoring seasonality, scale, sharing, partnerships, training and valuing human resources.
Chef and owner of “A Cozinha,” António Loureiro, stated in a press release that the certification aligns with the restaurant’s values and objectives. The goal is “to minimize the impact of our activity on the environment, helping us to develop practices and strategies in our creative process, in order to produce haute cuisine, with environmental, social, and financial sustainability,” he says.
Kaisa Karjalainen, coordinator of MiZA, highlights that the certification of ‘A Cozinha’ demonstrates how even budget-conscious customers can make waste-preventing choices, not only by eliminating unnecessary packaging but also by maximizing the utilization of food in meal preparation.
Marta Cerqueira is from Minho and vegetarian. Luckily, she lives in Lisbon, where there is more tofu than curd. She has been a journalist for over 15 years, the last of which writing about food and sustainability. Now, out of the newsroom, she continues to write whenever she can, be it in magazines, journals, post it, or on her Instagram page, which she uses to share a life that is divided between being a mom-person-foodie-traveler. Still, she created Peggada so she could write about what doesn't fit in a magazine, journal, post it or Instagram: a better world.
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