World Sustainability Organization Makes 30% Plant-Based Menus Mandatory for Restaurants

The World Sustainability Organization has updated its certification standards for the foodservice industry, requiring restaurants and hotels to make 30% of all meals plant-based.

The hospitality industry’s drive to offer greener menus is picking up pace.

Two months after the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) published a benchmark requiring hotels to make 30% of their food menus plant-based, another certification body is getting in on the act.

The World Sustainability Organization (WSO) has updated the standards for its global certification schemes, Friend of the Earth and Friend of the Sea, asking restaurants, cafés, caterers and hotels to meet that 30% threshold and move towards higher-welfare standards for animal proteins.

“Pairing meaningful animal welfare requirements with a strong plant-based foods benchmark is exactly the kind of standard needed for true sustainability,” said Ribbin Nichapa, corporate engagement manager at Lever Foundation, which helped WSO set the new standards.

“The updated policies from Friend of the Earth and Friend of the Sea set a clear, credible, and common-sense standard that gives certified restaurants, hotels and food service companies something meaningful to point to with their customers.”

New standards tackle plant-based menus, food waste and animal welfare

Aside from the 30% requirement, the revised Sustainable Restaurants standard for certification by Friend of the Earth and Friend of the Sea outlines that these plant-based dishes must be featured and promoted on the menu.

In addition, restaurants are now required to source all animal proteins from producers that avoid cages, crates and ongoing tethering. “Animals must be slaughtered in a humane method that produces instant insensibility followed by death while insensate,” the standard reads.

There’s also a provision for food waste prevention, with foodservice operators needing to manage what comes in and goes out to lower food loss and eliminate waste from landfill, as well as have a plan to develop a partnership within 12 months with a non-governmental organisation to deliver unused food to those in need.

Meeting all of these requirements is mandatory for foodservice businesses to qualify for and retain certification from this standard, which currently covers over 500 restaurants globally.

Meanwhile, the companion Sustainable Tourism Facilities standard, meant for hotels, resorts and other tourism providers, mandates that plant-based dishes should make up 30% of menus within 12 months of certification. The cage-free and humane slaughter requirement for animal protein exists here too, and follows the same timeline.

This tourism industry standard goes a step further with food waste, asking operators to set and meet specific targets to lower the proportion of waste by at least 10% in each of the following three years.

Hospitality industry goes gung-ho on plant-based food

Lever Foundation suggested that the updated criteria represent “another significant step forward” by a major hospitality industry certifier to embed food sustainability and animal welfare in certification requirements.

It follows the GSTC’s publication of its first food and beverage standard, which requires operators to make at least 30% of their food offerings plant-based or “predominantly” plant-based (including dishes with small amounts of dairy, eggs, animal fats or seasoning components).

The GSTC was founded in 2007 with the backing of the UN Environment Programme and World Tourism Organization, and accredits independent certification bodies that audit hotels, tour operators, and destinations against its global standards. There are currently more than 2,000 GSTC-certified hotels across dozens of countries, highlighting the sheer impact of its updated standards.

These efforts take aim at the hotel industry’s colossal climate impact – if it were a country, it would be in the top 25% of the biggest polluters. Scope 3 emissions account for over 90% of its carbon footprint, with food procurement among the most significant contributors. In fact, food sourcing is responsible for 62% of a hotel’s food-related emissions, far more than energy use or food waste management.

A typical hotel meal produces three times higher emissions than a home-cooked counterpart. And animal-derived ingredients alone contribute to 70% of these food sourcing emissions in this sector. And of the 1.05 billion tonnes of food wasted every year, the foodservice sector is responsible for 28% of it (behind only households).

This is why the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance partnered with US non-profit Vegan Hospitality last year to help its member hotels (which include the top 11 chains) expand plant-based dining solutions and meet its goals to cut industry emissions by 30% by 2030.

Individual companies have made similar promises. Accor, the parent company of Novotel, Raffles, Pullman, and Ibis, has pledged to turn half its menu meatless globally by 2030, and IHG Hotels & Resorts has pledged to make 30% of its menus in the Philippines plant-based, spanning brands like Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn. In China, too, at least a dozen leading hotels have vowed to increase their share of plant-based proteins.