We are delighted to announce that Hull City Council are now signed up to be a sustainable palm oil champion for the Hull & East Yorkshire region.
Katy Duke, CEO of The Deep, said: “We are delighted to welcome Hull City Council as one of our first sustainable palm oil champions for the Hull & East Yorkshire region. It is great to hear how they have recognised the vital importance of supporting sustainable palm oil and its use, and of the first product change they have made. As such a key local organisation, we are pleased to have the council’s support for this campaign; in turn, we look forward to working closely with them as they continue to audit their supply chain.”
The process of signing up to become a champion involves making one change to a sustainable palm oil product and then completing a pledge, which lets us know that your business is committed to ensuring that the food products you buy and sell will be audited and over time you will make the transition across all your food and cleaning products to only purchase those containing sustainable palm oil. We then ask that your pledge is displayed prominently on your website.
Carol Swaby, Area Catering Supervisor at Hull City Council, said: “The first change we made was our cooking oil; we identified a replacement oil through our suppliers which used sustainable palm oil, we then checked their accreditation and then once all checks were completed, we worked with Turner Price to remove our previous oil and replace with the new oil. This information was then sent to all sites through our cypad messenger system to notify them of the change and to ask them to order the new oil at their next order.”
“The next change that we made involved individually going through the specifications of all our products used in our establishments to identify any that contained palm oil; these were then checked for sustainability. Any that weren’t registered as sustainable were replaced with an alternate product once our supplies were depleted.”
“During the course of formatting new menus for the summer in all our establishments, we have only incorporated any palm oil contained products that are RSPO certified. This will enable us to meet our pledge by the September deadline.”
Commenting on the process of auditing and signing up, Elaine Boyce, Strategic Operations Manager at Hull City Council, said: “We were amazed at how easy the process was, considering we are such a small team involved in supporting the sustainable palm oil campaign. The process of making the switch to using sustainable palm oil was surprisingly inexpensive and simple. We feel a great sense of pride in knowing how our switch is helping support The Deep’s local campaign and the wider sustainable palm oil community, recognising the positive impact on the environment.”
Hull City Council have now received their sustainable palm oil window stickers and certificates which will be displayed at their establishments across the city.
If you are interested in finding out more about how you can take the first steps to becoming a sustainable palm oil champion, please visit: https://www.thedeep.co.uk/conservation/conservation-projects/united-kingdom/help-us-make-hull-east-yorkshire-a-sustainable-palm-oil-region-1 or email marketing@thedeep.co.uk with an expression of interest.