Everyone agrees: the future will be all about sustainability. So if you thought it was just a passing fashion of interest mainly to millennials, think again. Because an ethical approach will be the cornerstone of the foodservice and hospitality sectors also and above all at the luxury end of the market. This was very clearly explained by those taking part in the webinar “When Luxury and Sustainability in Food & Beverage Go Hand In Hand and…Fly” organised by HostMilano and TUTTOFOOD with an innovative format: nine stakeholders in the Ho.Re.Ca industry came together from their “luxury destinations” to establish how things stand and offer their experiences in the field.

Subjects addressed included layouts, furnishings and structures, which will increasingly have zero impact. From the Li Xian Bao restaurant of the Bulgari Hotel Shanghai, Paul Tse, of L&T Architecture, stressed how sustainability in architecture is not just about reusing materials like marble and timber, but can even mean recycling an entire building, keeping the high-end materials and the main structure and redesigning key elements to turn it into a boutique hotel. First-class cabins on cruise ships and seats on aircraft will also become more spacious. As for hotels, leading Chinese hotelier Philip Wei explained the ways in which the WEI hotels are incorporating traditional elements of Chinese culture to maintain a balance between nature and human beings, focusing attention on all aspects of sustainability.

“For high-end international retail operations we have selected a series of food products from different parts of the world, paying special attention to the production of the ingredients and packaging,” said Omar Mohammed, retail manager of Jones The Grocer, from the Yacht Club Lounge of the Bulgari Hotel in Dubai. “Some of their products feature 100% biodegradable packaging and 100% plant-based ingredients, i.e. for healthy ice cream and beverages”. The demand for healthy food will play an increasingly important role.

In Milan, Attilio Marro, Bulgari Hotel’s senior director, described the four pillars of their sustainability programme: going plastic free by the end of 2020; optimisation of food-ingredient sourcing in a way that prioritises local produce and healthy, organic food; energy-saving using solar panels and motion detectors; and Corporate Social Responsibility through a partnership with Save the Children worldwide.

From the Toscana Divino Restaurant in Miami, one of the city’s few high-end restaurants that explicitly styles itself as sustainable, Tommaso Cardana, director of Tomson Hospitality, talked about a project he personally developed: the introduction of purified water to replace bottled water on a cruise line. This change brought a net saving of 3 million plastic bottles in one year. The impact of the saving should be measured not only in terms of reduced plastic consumption but also in the lower carbon footprint relating to the transportation of such a large amount of bottles around the world.

So the idea of sustainable meaning a sad, spartan life of deprivation seems to be well and truly a thing of the past. Today, sustainability is a priority also for the world of luxury, which has embraced it and is actively working towards ways of applying it in the day-to-day running of operations. And it is happening all over the world, from Milan and Miami to Dubai and Shanghai.