5th February 2020
Sustainability has always been part of what we do[1], but it’s become something of a buzzword in recent years and is now at the front of how we think about how we live life. it’s part of how we shop, how we drive, how we eat; it’s also part of how the world approaches us. It’s part of how we process information and it’s part of our language.
To place oneself on the sustainability map is any and/or all of the following:
Complicated
Trendy
Necessary
Challenging
Boring
A natural step towards the future
A natural step towards the past
Unnatural
A natural response to social media
Savvy
Copping out
Inconvenient
The beginning of an interesting conversation
Just part of being alive in London in 2020
We think that if you can dodge the clichés and the media filler, sustainability is quite exciting. This is because it demands innovation, lateral outlook and willingness for adventure. If you don’t have too much to lose, it’s basically fun. As an ideal, we’re trying to manoeuvre ourselves towards the losers, and it fits nicely with that trajectory. It’s ultimately about a realistic rendering of the future.
Because of the way we’ve developed as a company and the place that sustainability has had in the mix so far, it seemed a good idea to document our journey. I started reading Dan Barber’s the Third Plate last summer and my brain nearly exploded with ideas/possibilities for the food we serve and the way we fit into this industry, neighbourhood, community… the gauntlet firmly dropped at the bit where he says, “truly whole whole wheat flour, you could argue, means milling it yourself… if that sounds like the worst sort of food snobbery, think of coffee: no self-respecting barista uses pre-ground beans.”[2]
The subsequent (and continued) overhaul of every operational assumption within Well Kneaded has been a white-knuckle ride. There’s been excitement, a generally over-active sense of possibility and some very happy breakthroughs. In documenting the journey, it became apparent that none of this is linear. A spider diagram seemed a better fit for the murmuration of thoughts and ideas that comprise this journey towards sustainability. Perhaps ‘applied sustainability’ is a truer way of addressing it, though that sounds a bit too like a degree module to sit entirely comfortably.
The spider diagram will be on our website and will routinely be updated, added to and replaced by a new diagram when necessary. There’s a grid on it and we’ll use this as a means of referencing how articles/ideas fit within the bigger, convoluted picture