Drinking and eating to inspire a better planet

This is sponsored content for Lavazza Australia.

There's plenty of jargon and hype about eco-friendly food and drinking. Discover more about sustainable eating in this short guide to the different ways chefs and businesses are creating more sustainable food and drink experiences.

Everything humans do - including eat and drink - costs the planet. But who wants pious soapboxers wagging fingers about our daily caffeine hit or takeaway lunch?

Some food innovators and hospitality types are going the extra mile to make sure sustainable food and drink experiences inspire us to give the planet that little bit of extra consideration.

Take Melbourne chef and sustainability educator Ben McMenamin who initially gave up cooking to study environmental social science and do something "more altruistic".

McMenamin thought he would work in government or not-for-profits to preach sustainability, but realised workshops, farmer events and pop up dinners through the Social Food Project actually inspired people people to act.

"There is a lot of information out there about how to be more sustainable, but it doesn't necessarily impact people's decisions or day-to-day actions," he says.

He encourages people to buy local and organic and hosts farmer dinners at Ceres restaurant, allowing local food producers to sit at communal tables with diners eating sustainable, locally-sourced produce.

McMenamin has also started an app to help people find Melbourne cafes and restaurants using sustainable food producers and he wants to expand it to include Sydney, Brisbane and Byron Bay.

The way food is produced and farmed is where most of its planetary impact happens, according to McMenamin.

Flying Fish executive chef Peter Robinson agrees, saying he 'woke up' to sustainable eating after spending time in Canada, where he was part of Growing Chefs and had customers who wrote The 100-Mile Diet.

"If we can promote the brands and the ideas that are better for the planet, then that's a good thing," Robertson says.

He sources South Australian seafood producers who go above and beyond government regulations and quotas to ensure prawns and rare fish breeds remain sustainable and abundant.

His chefs use every bit of the expensive seafood the restaurant serves up, boiling the fish bones with soy and mirin to make a seafood glaze and scraping fish frames and wings from expensive Bass Grouper to create the fish burger sold at the bar.

"You can buy the most sustainable fish that's caught within quota but if you are just taking the fillets and flinging the rest of that fish in the bin, then you aren't doing anything sustainable at all," Robertson says.

There's no getting away from the realities of running a resource-hungry restaurant which serves beef, caviar and luxuries like French champagne, but Robertson says even caviar is moving towards more sustainable aquaculture production.

"When the whole sustainable eating thing started, people's noses were being rubbed in it and they were made to feel guilty," Robertson says.

"You want people to understand what best practice is and take people through the process of what is good for the planet - you don't want to make people feel bad if they don't do it."

Yet Danish-born barista Ninna Larsen couldn't help but feel she was doing something wrong creating delicious espressos for coffee lovers but also generating kilograms upon kilograms of coffee grounds that were simply thrown away.

Her work as a Melbourne barista was clouded by guilt that the coffee grounds were not being upcycled to create compost or grow food like mushrooms.

So Larsen got to work rallying Melbourne coffee roasters, cafes and Keepcup to fund her business Reground, which offers a pick up service for cafes to take coffee grounds direct to gardeners. Reground is also setting up a soft plastics collection service for cafes and has plans to set up a sustainability ratings system for cafes and restaurants.

"We are a small agile business and we want to help people out as we believe in the collaborative and circular economy," she says.

Foresee change business forecaster Charlie Nelson says belief in climate change is now as high as it was in 2007 and people are looking for innovative solutions to environmental challenges.

"The IPCC would have us believe that we need to become vegans to save the planet from all the emissions created by cows and sheep and eating meat," Nelson says.

"But Australia's own CSIRO have invented FutureFeed, a seaweed-based feed that can reduce methane in livestock by amazing amounts. It's new ways of thinking and better policies that will drive change and a more sustainable approach."

Top 3 things to consider if you want to eat more sustainably:

Buy food that's fresh, grown nearby and in season. Buying from a farmers market also helps support small food producers.Ask questions about the food you buy - choosing a kangaroo steak over a grain-fed beef steak is a better option. Eating plant-based food is usually more sustainable than meat or seafood.

3.Buy food produced in regenerative systems where the land incorporates ecological principles into the agriculture rather than relying on fertilisers and pesticides to produce food.

4. When it comes to coffee, whether you prefer filtered, espresso or instant, the way coffee is grown and produced has the biggest impact on its sustainability.

5.All coffee has food miles attached to it as it can only be grown in high altitude regions of the world. Buy organic, shade-grown coffee, which tends to avoid heavy use of fertilisers and pesticides.

Lavazza's iTierra! is a sustainably grown coffee range with Organic, UTZ or Rainforest Alliance certification. Lavazza's commitment in sustainability is focused on the ¡Tierra! project, Lavazza's first CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiative, developed by the Giuseppe and Pericle Lavazza Foundation that since 2002 has supported small communities of coffee growers. Today, the ¡Tierra! project counts with 20 projects in 15 countries reaching over 90,000 people. Find more about iTierra! Range on lavazza.com.au