Another business doing its part to help the environment is 42 Bannerman Trattoria eBar. Sam Mammoliti’s restaurant is located 30 minutes out of Sydney in the rural, residential suburb of Glenhaven.
It sources all its fruit and vegetables from within a 35km radius and 90% of the food is produced on-site. The trattoria grows its own blood oranges, limes, lemons, olives, tomatoes and pumpkins, as well as a variety of herbs.
Mammoliti told SmartCompany he also uses a lot of seconds and recycled materials.
“For us, we didn’t decide overnight to become what we are; we’ve just always done it. Even as a family we always bought from local farmers, it’s part of our culture.
“You find trattorias in the countryside of Italy and you grow what you have… that’s the reason we opened out here. For four years we changed our menu once a week depending on what was growing and what was good. That’s why we can do it; we don’t have a fixed menu.”
Mammoliti says chefs currently “want everything at their fingertips”, but fresh produce isn’t available all year round.
“We always get comments from regular customers saying they want something back, and occasionally we do it, but while it’s easy to have a fixed menu, it’s not as fun either,” he says.
Mammoliti is now delivering boxes of seconds from local farmers to restaurants in Sydney.
“They can’t believe the quality of the produce. This is how a restaurant should get their food, but you have to be structured differently and think outside the box,” he says.
“For two years we held a local farmers market on site and we did it every second month and we didn’t charge the farmers rent. We also publish a magazine educating the local community about buying local.”
Mammoliti is currently working on a number of new environmentally sustainable initiatives. He is recycling a 1957 Fiat into a pizza oven, running city markets with local produce and helping establish relationships between city restaurants and local farmers.
“We’ve put ourselves into a niche market where seven years ago we planted olive and lemon trees which are just starting to fruit now. People need to understand what it is to buy local – going to a local farmers market in Sydney isn’t necessarily buying local products,” he says.
“I had a couple of cars, old Fiats, which were going to be thrown away. Instead, we got them delivered down here from Queensland and I thought it would be a challenge to turn them into pizza ovens,” he says.
But despite the efforts being made by some small businesses, Australia still has a long way to go toward meeting its pledge of lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020.
Since 1990, OECD data reveals only Chile, Mexico, Korea and Turkey have had higher increases in emissions than Australian. In the same time, the UK, France, Germany and Italy have all lowered their emissions.
The average OECD country has reduced sulphur dioxide emissions by 60% in the last 20years, but Australia’s has risen by 50%.
In good news, Australians have decreased their fishing by 30% in 20 years and lowered the amount of urban waste generated since 2000 by more than the OECD average.
One of the biggest causes of pollution is Australia’s reliance on coal. Coal exports have tripled in the past 25 years to 300 million tonnes, around one third of the world’s seaborne trade. University of NSW researcher and author David McKnight says the impacts are starting to be noticed in Australia
“Out atmosphere is 4% to 5% moister than it was 40 years ago and warm air traps more water vapour than cold air. Scientists tell us this means we face droughts and floods on a new scale,” he wrote in an article for the Sydney Morning Herald.
The sea water in the Sydney Harbour is also 30% more acidic than in pre-industrial times, a great risk to the ocean’s reefs.
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