I am Sodexo

Evelien de Bot is Team

Lead Food & Facility.

Preventing food waste was instilled in her as a skipper’s daughter. At Sodexo, she encourages colleagues and guests to be mindful of ingredients and dishes.

‘My parents are barge skippers. This meant that my mother sometimes had to go shopping for three to four weeks’ worth of groceries at a time. We did not always know when we could go ashore again. We had the fridge, freezer and cupboard for perishables. What was in there was actually used. Discarding ingredients or leftovers? Never! So being conscious about food is something I have inherited from home. Now everyone calls it sustainability, but for me it was always the norm.

So when I joined Sodexo as a cook a few years ago, I thought preventing food waste was selfevident. It can be so easy. For example, by making fewer dishes and supplementing as needed. By not adding all the radishes to the salad, but keeping some separate. If there are some left over, they can be put on a sandwich the next day. You can make smoothies from overripe fruit.

I like to show my colleagues and guests the possibilities. Initiatives like WasteLESS week get me excited. In the restaurant at Sodexo’s headquarters in Rotterdam, we provide facilities for our guests to pack their leftover sandwich to eat later.

And we weigh our food leftovers in the kitchen with the WasteWatch programme, from the cutting loss of potatoes to a bell pepper that is no longer good. When you see that weight and then convert it into an amount, it really hits home. When people talk about sustainability, they often say they want to contribute to a better world. But the world is a big place. I mainly make an impact in my own environment. Because that’s where it starts, right?’