Virgin Serves In-Flight Sustainable Food

Virgin Atlantic has partnered with the Sustainable Restaurant Association to serve sustainable food on in-flight meals.

By the end of the year, all of Virgin Atlantic’s caterers worldwide will have been rated by the SRA, according to the association, which says this program is the first of its kind in the airline industry.

SRA’s Sustainability Rating program examines restaurants and caterers in 15 areas across three categories: sourcing, environment and society. The areas include environmentally positive farming, local and seasonal food, sustainable seafood, water savings, water management and energy efficiency, among others. SRA assessors give each restaurant a rating — one star, two star or three star sustainability champion — and publish a directory of those that receive champion status.

SRA works with more than 1,000 UK restaurants. Europe’s biggest train operators, Eurostar, last year became the first transport provider to partner with the SRA, Business Traveler reports.

Virgin Atlantic says the SRA ratings will show the company how it and its global suppliers perform from a sustainability perspective and help it make improvements.

New aircraft and software that calculates more efficient flight paths have put Virgin Atlantic on track to meet its 2020 target of a 30 percent reduction in normalized emissions over 2007 levels, according to the company’s latest sustainability report.

Last week, environmental software firm FirstCarbon Solutions and food service management company Compass Group launched an online tool to help Compass Group chefs and managers reduce energy, water and resource use.

The new Carbon Foodprint toolkit is available to all 9,900 Compass Group cafes in the US. Auburn University, Green Mountain College and software company SAP, which has cafes in its buildings, are already using the product, FirstCarbon Solutions and Compass Group say.