Peach 20/20 director Peter Martin has joined the Zero Carbon Forum Advisory Board to support its mission of decarbonising the hospitality and brewing sector at pace.
A leading hospitality industry influencer and visionary with over 40 years of experience, Peter founded Peach 20/20 as a network to connect and inspire hospitality’s brightest minds. Its members include senior executives from across the eating and drinking-out market and the annual Peach 20/20 conference, now in its 25th year, provides members with access to expert speakers and board-level insights from hospitality leaders globally.
A long-term advocate of sustainability within the sector, Peter will bring his skills and influence to further amplify the work of Zero Carbon Forum and encourage more operators to join the forum and commit to a zero carbon future.
Peter said: “One of the many things I’m most excited about at the forum is being able to bring people together in a variety of ways to exchange views and ideas. I’m looking forward to encouraging other parts of the food and drink market, such as the farming community on food security and sustainable production and supply.
“By working with the forum, the sector can develop and improve its communications and narrative around sustainability, both within the industry and to the wider public. That’s not easy though, as we are all only partly down the road to sustainability – and the picture is far from complete. The sector does have a good story to tell though – and that can inspire others to get involved.”
Zero Carbon Forum is turning talking into actions by enabling its members to take action individually and collectively across all emission areas on food and drink, energy, water, waste and more. Having already announced member savings of over £1.43m in lost profits as a result of its Save While You Sleep campaign, members are well on their way to reaching the targets set by the forum of eliminating operational emissions by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions across the supply chain by 2040.
Mark Chapman, founder and CEO at Zero Carbon said: “We are absolutely thrilled to have Peter on the Forum Advisory Board to further support our journey. His unrivalled industry knowledge and broad network means that he is perfectly placed to help guide our strategic aims moving forward. He will be an excellent forum representative and voice of the sector’s challenges and opportunities in moving to net zero emissions.”
Peter added: “Hospitality is ideally positioned to take a wider business lead on carbon issues because of its day-to-day contact with the public and its generally younger, more environmentally committed workforce. That’s exciting.
“But many companies are finding it difficult to know where to start and are understandably cautious about talking about their achievements to date. Customers and in particular, front-line teams want and expect hospitality to be engaged in sustainability initiatives – with packaging, waste, recycling and local sourcing to the fore. But consumers especially want to hear about what operators are actually doing – which brings us back to the need for improved communication.”
In terms of ways of measuring success for the hospitality and brewing sector, Peter explains what a key indicator might be: “Improving sustainability is an on-going process, marked with milestones. For me, it might be to get every operator within the pub, bar and restaurant sector involved in the forum in at least some way.”
Bob Gordon, Zero Carbon Forum Director, commented: “Peter has been a long-time champion of our work at the forum and announcing his appointment in an official capacity on the Advisory Board is hugely exciting. Adding Peter to the team only strengthens our position within the industry as the go to leader in sustainability for the sector.”