Has Sustainability Left the Bar?

The buzz around sustainable cocktails has died down in recent years, but does that mean it’s 86’d or has conscientious cocktails become the norm?

Written By: Abby Wiseman 

It’s 2016, and Kelsey Ramage is a head bartender at one of London’s hottest bars, Dandelyon. Conversations around zero-waste and “going green” are at their peak in the public zeitgeist, and top chefs are incorporating nose-to-tail dishes into their menus.

However, the movement hasn’t fully crossed over to the bar, where waste piles up as quickly as cocktails can be drunk down. This doesn’t sit easily with Ramage, who grew up on Canada’s recycling system in a family that was conscientious enough to compost. She and her team start seeking inspiration from the prep room, aiming to find ways to give discarded items a second life.

She posts recipes and resource guides online under the name Trash Tiki (now Trash Collective). The site strikes a chord and gains popularity for its sustainable spin on Tiki cocktails, known for their fanfare and swizzle sticks. Ramage and her partner host a few successful pop-ups and then take Trash Tiki on the road, living like nomads for a year.

The sustainable cocktail movement has wheels, but a couple years later, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts progress, and sustainability takes a backseat to public health concerns. Since then, the non-alcoholic movement has taken prominence, while the focus on sustainability behind the bar has not regained its previous prominence in the public discourse.

“I do see a line there,” said Ramage from her LA home. “There was more attention paid to it before the pandemic, and then I feel like the pandemic happened and everybody was like, well, fuck.”

Photo of Kelsey Ramage (left); The Botanist Champagne Martini (right)

However, with surging food prices, labour costs, and threats of tariffs hurting an already stretched industry, perhaps it’s time to dust off those resource guides and make the business case for sustainable cocktails.

Emma Osmond is the bar manager at Odd Duck Wine & Provisions in Kitchener —a no-tip restaurant known for its creative, rotating menu and unique cocktail and wine selection. Odd Duck is a far cry from her first bartending job, where she watched coworkers practice zesting the skin of oranges only to discard them whole because after being flayed.

“It was always jarring seeing that, but I was such a baby bartender that I didn’t think it was my place to tell them to be sustainable.”

There is no shortage of food waste in Canadian restaurants. Statistics Canada reports that 21 per cent of dairy, eggs, and field crops, 38 per cent of produce, and 20 per cent of meat are tossed, resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue and agricultural overproduction, which increases the industry’s environmental impact.

Osmond doesn’t want to contribute to those stats, so she works closely with the kitchen staff to stay on top of ingredients coming through the restaurant and stays connected to local farmers to access unique, local ingredients, such as pawpaw, holy basil, and sea buckthorn.

“A huge game changer for me was using more local ingredients,” said Osmond. “I’m not ordering a ton of oranges and limes that spent how long in a truck from Mexico to here? You also have to consider the emissions it takes to bring them here.”

Osmonds' locavore philosophy echoes an observation made by Ramage that the sustainability conversation has shifted from waste reduction to sourcing locally. “I think that's also something that's super dope that I'm seeing happening where people are reaching for local things instead of being like, what weird ingredient can I find that's only grown in the Amazon?” notes Ramage. “I'm enjoying that that's not happening as much anymore, and there's more of a respect for locality.”

Chairman’s Lounge Cocktail (left), Photo of Emma Osmond (right)

Being a sustainable bartender like Ramage and Osmond requires a level of curiosity and commitment not found in those who want to sling vodka sodas all night. Their craft requires them to possess practical knowledge of local ingredients, preservation techniques, and fermentation methods that border on herbalism. They also think beyond the menu, considering things like reducing water waste by not “burning” the ice with hot water at the end of the night, or sourcing ingredients packaged in plastics that can be recycled locally.

“There are some things that are out of your control, but there are certain little things that you can do,” said Ramage. “I think that we need to make sustainability not this giant overhaul where it feels unattainable for people, because then we'll never make progress.”

The work requires imagination and collaboration between back of house and front of house. It can also be labour intensive and labour is always a line item of concern in a restaurant owner's budget, which is why Osmond said that leadership investment into sustainability is essential.

“I think when it comes to just really getting sustainable projects to continue and just to make that an everyday thing in the workplace, you need your leadership to be on board, because if they're not, it's really going to fall all through the cracks.”