[Applause]
I own a restaurant that doesn’t have a
bin the popular term for this is zero
waste for me to be zero waste is to be
natural the current landscape of food in
the world today is not so natural it’s
industrial this is why waste exists a
decade before this journey began I was
not doing very well in school I hated
school felt like a caged animal
suppressed and without a voice
thankfully they let me out of the cage
and I found my way into a local kitchen
kitchens can be pretty unruly places
full of anarchy and chaos the life of a
chef isn’t too dissimilar to the life of
a pirate whilst there are rules and
discipline there is a freedom a freedom
to express yourself to be yourself to
become an individual I felt like I’d
woken up see something in school gave me
something of a failure complex and I
decided when when I decided to be a chef
I had to work for the best restaurants I
wanted to work for the best restaurants
in the world
the insecure chip on my shoulder
demanded it whilst my agenda was
questionable something rather amazing
happened
you see I decided to not go to one
restaurant I decided to go to dozens of
restaurants all of which inspired me all
of which were very good will
I was catching glimpses of multiple
complementary chefs that were thinking
and doing things a particular way which
was to me was brilliant I was soaking up
so many different points of view
now perspective is a beautiful thing I’m
a big fan of perspective I think it’s
highly underrated perspective is like a
jigsaw puzzle the more pieces through
life that you can collect the greater
the image you can see now when you can
see the bigger picture you can react
accordingly when I was on this a
gastronomic crusade I found myself in
Australia I was particularly attracted
to work at this particular restaurant
one of these world-class restaurants and
the food looked so natural almost like
it fallen from a tree and onto the plate
unfortunately what I discovered with
this restaurant is that it wasn’t so
natural I was on the the protein section
it was my duty to butcher pigs heads
every day I would have to butcher over a
hundred and ten pigs heads I would have
to cut the pig’s face off of its skull I
would then take a blowtorch singeing the
hair from its face smell was
intoxicating then eventually when I
prepped them all I would then Suvi the
pigs heads which is a name for a posh
plastic bag then they would be steamed
in the oven overnight constant water
flooding into these these ovens and then
escaping down the drain the next morning
with help I would tip the I would take
the pigs heads purge them into these big
bass of ice then tip the ice away as
soon as the pigs heads were chilled
strip the bags away into the bin
recycling wasn’t a concept that we
understood eventually then I’d have
these gelatinous flabby mountain of pigs
heads that I would then trim down to a
piece of meat the size of a golf ball
80% or more of these pigs heads were cut
away into this into the bin or the Skip
condemned without a fair trial defiling
hundreds upon hundreds of pigs heads for
a few short forgettable moments of
gluttony is wrong sometimes this
perspective that I champion isn’t always
so pretty
sometimes parts of the puzzle are ugly
however very important as if by some
force of cosmic serendipity around that
time in Australia I met the zero-waste
Messiah from pigs heads to profit by way
of beautiful contrast this chaps name
was Yost Becker he was a huge dutch man
with blond hair and piercing blue eyes
and he had this presence you know
brilliant people have this remarkable
presence It was as if ghosts was from
the future a future where everything
made more sense a future where they had
all of the answers everything that you
did everything they said his actions his
ideas were so simple yet people couldn’t
quite catch on
they were so radical it was Yost’s
premonition for a zero-waste restaurant
I happened to be there at that time in
place and was lucky enough to be taken
on board spent
a few years in Australia with Yost
working in the genesis of this idea
unfortunately it was my home time
England was beckoning me back it’s been
a lot of time considering what happened
in Australia knowing that I’d caught a
glimpse into the future at least my
future I was on the right path this sexy
warehouse door is now the home of silo I
happened upon this beautiful door
wandering around the streets of Brighton
as soon as I looked at that door and
through the window I knew this was the
right place now I’d like to share a
quote and it’s a quote which sums up how
I see silo what it means to me at its
core and it’s a quote from Desmond Tutu
and Desmond Desmond said there comes a
point where you have to stop pulling
people out of the river only to go
upstream to find out why they’re jumping
in silo doesn’t tackle the problem silo
is a means to prevent that problem
forever existing a systemic intervention
extracting the DNA of the problem I’m
going to stop philosophizing and start
explaining how silo works so you have to
when you’re trying to avoid having a bin
you have to reverse engineer the supply
chain you have to trade directly with
everything that you need and then
everything comes in in a vessel that can
endlessly be reused and if it can’t
endlessly be reused
will be completely natural or
biodegradable so the next dilemma is
Whole Foods
you see Whole Foods is the way we accept
ingredients because Whole Foods don’t
come processed as soon as processing
exists so does legislation and laws and
confusion
we are sidestepping that confusion and
deciding to take the Whole Foods upon
ourselves so we mill flour we mill flour
from whole wheat that comes straight
from the farm to create bread we churn
butter we roll votes we ferment food we
turn milk into cheese and yogurt now
lastly when when all is said and done
and we’re eating this food eventually
there will be waste but silo all of that
waste is organic now the organic waste
that we don’t eat is eaten by Bertha
birth there is a closed loop organics
compost machine she’s anaerobic digester
that can turn up to sixty kilos of
organic waste into compost in just one
day so to simply conclude everything
that comes into silo is packaged free or
natural and then everything that doesn’t
go into our bellies goes into the belly
of Bertha very simple now before this
story gets too fluffy
maybe romantic I want to I want to bring
it back down to earth a little bit there
isn’t a day that silo where something
doesn’t go horribly wrong
there isn’t a week where I don’t find my
head in my hands a great man want
said when you open a business or a
company that is innovative it’s like
chewing on glass and staring into the
abyss if anything I say today inspires
you know this progress is messy
we humans have an irrational fear of the
unknown terrified of what we don’t
understand as soon as you become
different you’re a target do I sound
extreme talking about a restaurant this
may be an extreme try putting everything
that you believe in on a bull’s eye only
to see it get shot at again and again
and again so to lighten the lighten the
tone when you trading with this farmer
and you’re receiving his or her grain or
milk your relationship to food changes
very quickly
it was insisting upon this model of
having no bin where I realized something
we were outside of the industrial sphere
now when you’re on the outside of
something for so long you can see that
thing for what it really is you can see
it for its flaws now there’s a name for
people that oppose industrial progress a
Luddite I don’t consider myself a
Luddite though I do think it’s very very
important to highlight that process
industrial food is not alive we however
are alive
we’re on a planet which is alive doesn’t
make sense to eat food which is dead now
industrialism is a brilliant idea
so is capitalism the problem with both
of both of these things peas in a pod is
greed when greed enters the equation the
system fails now there’s a there’s an
expression you can’t see the wood for
the trees I feel like we were in the
woods and then by default by having this
limitation we left the wood only to turn
around and see the wood was on fire now
why am I telling you all of this I’m
telling you this because this is the
bigger picture this is the wood ablaze
it’s the industrialism of food that is
making a Zil furthermore it’s making the
planet ill it’s this detachment from
people to nature that creates apathy now
when your back is turned on nature your
value of food of nature changes food
becomes expendable it’s a commodity like
I said before this is why waste exists I
have a have a theory of hacking
perspective and it’s simple it’s
insisting that your mind sees things
differently I call this idea a careful
chaos by not having a bin is forcing
ourselves to see things
differently limitation is a beautiful
thing
it’s the limitation that we create for
ourselves so not having a bin is like
going through one door but when you go
through that door there’s ten more doors
and this limitation should be embraced
we certainly do silo has become a
creative powerhouse through this
limitation this plate is made out of
waste plastic bags now if you look at
waste plastic bags as waste then that’s
what it will always be but if you find
those very small beer joules of
potential you may see something
different you may see a form you may
even see beauty I’d like to think of
this plate as a as a symbol symbols a
strong word but I really do for
something which really represents this
ideology waste is a failure of the
imagination this is uh this is my
favorite villain I’m not talking about
the the forager but what he’s holding
this is Japanese knotweed according to
the Internet’s Japanese knotweed is the
world’s most invasive plant if you look
at this terrorist you’ll only see a
problem but when you shift your
perspective you will see this plant is
delicious in the spring it’s tender it’s
bright and acidic it’s multifunctional
you can eat it raw you can cook it you
can pick lit you can brine it do it
they want whatever you want with it we
turned them into canapes this was in
spring and we cooked the young tender
shoots which are hollow inside like
bamboo and we stuffed it with a raw
sheep’s milk sheep’s cheese mousse with
some wild garlic and you ate them and it
was all roaring it was completely divine
and then with a shorter thinner stems we
made straws and then through this
process there was a lot of waste bearing
in mind that this plant itself was not
only waste but an invader a problem so
we were eating the problem and through
these preparations
I’ve highlighters there was a lot of
waste lots of bits and bobs and in true
silo fashion we we looked at it and said
ah we could do this so we pickle brine
all of the trim cut him into small
little chunks and then we had it we had
these little chunks of pickle brine
Japanese knotweed and they were salty
and sweet and delicious and sour kind of
like some olives that you know olives
were what sprang to mind when we tasted
this product and are we starting in okay
well what could we use this for what do
we you what would we use and olive for
and then we thought about how what about
a martini yeah instead of a hell if we
can put pickled Japanese knotweed so so
yeah introducing the world’s most
invasive martini yeah this is all year
round it’s a nice aperitif to start the
meal using that beautiful invader now
one day this is a one of my more
abstract ideas one day I was
sleep-deprived delirious staring into
this compost wondering how it could
smell so citrusy
when I discovered that the Brewers we
have a brewery brilliant
gallant bunch of lads that make all of
our drinks and bring them in
reusable kegs and they had deposited 60
kilos of organic lemon waste into Bertha
it looks to me like compost but it
smells like lemon and interestingly to
note this lemon hood was like the third
layer of waste
they had intercepted which means the
lemons were rejected from the
supermarket for superficial reasons so
they had stopped it from going to
landfill from to waste they then made a
phenomenal batch of lemonade or whatever
it was they were making and then scratch
it a scattered it all so we were
receiving third layer of waste of lemons
and then putting it into into Bertha and
maybe it’s because of the sleep
deprivation
maybe I’m just I was just thinking
outside the box that day but it made
sense to cook these carrots that I had
that day in the compost which which
sounds crazy so this was this was the
sixty kilos of organic lemon waste going
into Bertha and then just 24 hours later
when that lemon weight had broke down
into into her compost we had lemony
compost which then we baked these
carrots in now as obscure as this is
these carrots tasted of lemon it was the
best kind of lemon it was beautiful and
elegant and fragrant and bright but not
too acidic you had this natural
sweetness from this carrot this
this actually turned into a dish and
this dish I served at a an event which
without any question was the most
important event of my life I was cooking
this dish for my my hero
so I’m not saying that cooking carrots
in compost is the the answer to life’s
problems however maybe a shift in
perspective might reveal some of those
answers with a problem like waste you
can look too closely at it what I’m
suggesting is to take a step back and to
see the bigger picture we’ve designed
waste into this world and I believe in
fact I’m certain we can design waste out
again thank you
[Applause]
[Applause]
I own a restaurant that doesn’t have a
bin the popular term for this is zero
waste for me to be zero waste is to be
natural the current landscape of food in
the world today is not so natural it’s
industrial this is why waste exists a
decade before this journey began I was
not doing very well in school I hated
school felt like a caged animal
suppressed and without a voice
thankfully they let me out of the cage
and I found my way into a local kitchen
kitchens can be pretty unruly places
full of anarchy and chaos the life of a
chef isn’t too dissimilar to the life of
a pirate whilst there are rules and
discipline there is a freedom a freedom
to express yourself to be yourself to
become an individual I felt like I’d
woken up see something in school gave me
something of a failure complex and I
decided when when I decided to be a chef
I had to work for the best restaurants I
wanted to work for the best restaurants
in the world
the insecure chip on my shoulder
demanded it whilst my agenda was
questionable something rather amazing
happened
you see I decided to not go to one
restaurant I decided to go to dozens of
restaurants all of which inspired me all
of which were very good will
I was catching glimpses of multiple
complementary chefs that were thinking
and doing things a particular way which
was to me was brilliant I was soaking up
so many different points of view
now perspective is a beautiful thing I’m
a big fan of perspective I think it’s
highly underrated perspective is like a
jigsaw puzzle the more pieces through
life that you can collect the greater
the image you can see now when you can
see the bigger picture you can react
accordingly when I was on this a
gastronomic crusade I found myself in
Australia I was particularly attracted
to work at this particular restaurant
one of these world-class restaurants and
the food looked so natural almost like
it fallen from a tree and onto the plate
unfortunately what I discovered with
this restaurant is that it wasn’t so
natural I was on the the protein section
it was my duty to butcher pigs heads
every day I would have to butcher over a
hundred and ten pigs heads I would have
to cut the pig’s face off of its skull I
would then take a blowtorch singeing the
hair from its face smell was
intoxicating then eventually when I
prepped them all I would then Suvi the
pigs heads which is a name for a posh
plastic bag then they would be steamed
in the oven overnight constant water
flooding into these these ovens and then
escaping down the drain the next morning
with help I would tip the I would take
the pigs heads purge them into these big
bass of ice then tip the ice away as
soon as the pigs heads were chilled
strip the bags away into the bin
recycling wasn’t a concept that we
understood eventually then I’d have
these gelatinous flabby mountain of pigs
heads that I would then trim down to a
piece of meat the size of a golf ball
80% or more of these pigs heads were cut
away into this into the bin or the Skip
condemned without a fair trial defiling
hundreds upon hundreds of pigs heads for
a few short forgettable moments of
gluttony is wrong sometimes this
perspective that I champion isn’t always
so pretty
sometimes parts of the puzzle are ugly
however very important as if by some
force of cosmic serendipity around that
time in Australia I met the zero-waste
Messiah from pigs heads to profit by way
of beautiful contrast this chaps name
was Yost Becker he was a huge dutch man
with blond hair and piercing blue eyes
and he had this presence you know
brilliant people have this remarkable
presence It was as if ghosts was from
the future a future where everything
made more sense a future where they had
all of the answers everything that you
did everything they said his actions his
ideas were so simple yet people couldn’t
quite catch on
they were so radical it was Yost’s
premonition for a zero-waste restaurant
I happened to be there at that time in
place and was lucky enough to be taken
on board spent
a few years in Australia with Yost
working in the genesis of this idea
unfortunately it was my home time
England was beckoning me back it’s been
a lot of time considering what happened
in Australia knowing that I’d caught a
glimpse into the future at least my
future I was on the right path this sexy
warehouse door is now the home of silo I
happened upon this beautiful door
wandering around the streets of Brighton
as soon as I looked at that door and
through the window I knew this was the
right place now I’d like to share a
quote and it’s a quote which sums up how
I see silo what it means to me at its
core and it’s a quote from Desmond Tutu
and Desmond Desmond said there comes a
point where you have to stop pulling
people out of the river only to go
upstream to find out why they’re jumping
in silo doesn’t tackle the problem silo
is a means to prevent that problem
forever existing a systemic intervention
extracting the DNA of the problem I’m
going to stop philosophizing and start
explaining how silo works so you have to
when you’re trying to avoid having a bin
you have to reverse engineer the supply
chain you have to trade directly with
everything that you need and then
everything comes in in a vessel that can
endlessly be reused and if it can’t
endlessly be reused
will be completely natural or
biodegradable so the next dilemma is
Whole Foods
you see Whole Foods is the way we accept
ingredients because Whole Foods don’t
come processed as soon as processing
exists so does legislation and laws and
confusion
we are sidestepping that confusion and
deciding to take the Whole Foods upon
ourselves so we mill flour we mill flour
from whole wheat that comes straight
from the farm to create bread we churn
butter we roll votes we ferment food we
turn milk into cheese and yogurt now
lastly when when all is said and done
and we’re eating this food eventually
there will be waste but silo all of that
waste is organic now the organic waste
that we don’t eat is eaten by Bertha
birth there is a closed loop organics
compost machine she’s anaerobic digester
that can turn up to sixty kilos of
organic waste into compost in just one
day so to simply conclude everything
that comes into silo is packaged free or
natural and then everything that doesn’t
go into our bellies goes into the belly
of Bertha very simple now before this
story gets too fluffy
maybe romantic I want to I want to bring
it back down to earth a little bit there
isn’t a day that silo where something
doesn’t go horribly wrong
there isn’t a week where I don’t find my
head in my hands a great man want
said when you open a business or a
company that is innovative it’s like
chewing on glass and staring into the
abyss if anything I say today inspires
you know this progress is messy
we humans have an irrational fear of the
unknown terrified of what we don’t
understand as soon as you become
different you’re a target do I sound
extreme talking about a restaurant this
may be an extreme try putting everything
that you believe in on a bull’s eye only
to see it get shot at again and again
and again so to lighten the lighten the
tone when you trading with this farmer
and you’re receiving his or her grain or
milk your relationship to food changes
very quickly
it was insisting upon this model of
having no bin where I realized something
we were outside of the industrial sphere
now when you’re on the outside of
something for so long you can see that
thing for what it really is you can see
it for its flaws now there’s a name for
people that oppose industrial progress a
Luddite I don’t consider myself a
Luddite though I do think it’s very very
important to highlight that process
industrial food is not alive we however
are alive
we’re on a planet which is alive doesn’t
make sense to eat food which is dead now
industrialism is a brilliant idea
so is capitalism the problem with both
of both of these things peas in a pod is
greed when greed enters the equation the
system fails now there’s a there’s an
expression you can’t see the wood for
the trees I feel like we were in the
woods and then by default by having this
limitation we left the wood only to turn
around and see the wood was on fire now
why am I telling you all of this I’m
telling you this because this is the
bigger picture this is the wood ablaze
it’s the industrialism of food that is
making a Zil furthermore it’s making the
planet ill it’s this detachment from
people to nature that creates apathy now
when your back is turned on nature your
value of food of nature changes food
becomes expendable it’s a commodity like
I said before this is why waste exists I
have a have a theory of hacking
perspective and it’s simple it’s
insisting that your mind sees things
differently I call this idea a careful
chaos by not having a bin is forcing
ourselves to see things
differently limitation is a beautiful
thing
it’s the limitation that we create for
ourselves so not having a bin is like
going through one door but when you go
through that door there’s ten more doors
and this limitation should be embraced
we certainly do silo has become a
creative powerhouse through this
limitation this plate is made out of
waste plastic bags now if you look at
waste plastic bags as waste then that’s
what it will always be but if you find
those very small beer joules of
potential you may see something
different you may see a form you may
even see beauty I’d like to think of
this plate as a as a symbol symbols a
strong word but I really do for
something which really represents this
ideology waste is a failure of the
imagination this is uh this is my
favorite villain I’m not talking about
the the forager but what he’s holding
this is Japanese knotweed according to
the Internet’s Japanese knotweed is the
world’s most invasive plant if you look
at this terrorist you’ll only see a
problem but when you shift your
perspective you will see this plant is
delicious in the spring it’s tender it’s
bright and acidic it’s multifunctional
you can eat it raw you can cook it you
can pick lit you can brine it do it
they want whatever you want with it we
turned them into canapes this was in
spring and we cooked the young tender
shoots which are hollow inside like
bamboo and we stuffed it with a raw
sheep’s milk sheep’s cheese mousse with
some wild garlic and you ate them and it
was all roaring it was completely divine
and then with a shorter thinner stems we
made straws and then through this
process there was a lot of waste bearing
in mind that this plant itself was not
only waste but an invader a problem so
we were eating the problem and through
these preparations
I’ve highlighters there was a lot of
waste lots of bits and bobs and in true
silo fashion we we looked at it and said
ah we could do this so we pickle brine
all of the trim cut him into small
little chunks and then we had it we had
these little chunks of pickle brine
Japanese knotweed and they were salty
and sweet and delicious and sour kind of
like some olives that you know olives
were what sprang to mind when we tasted
this product and are we starting in okay
well what could we use this for what do
we you what would we use and olive for
and then we thought about how what about
a martini yeah instead of a hell if we
can put pickled Japanese knotweed so so
yeah introducing the world’s most
invasive martini yeah this is all year
round it’s a nice aperitif to start the
meal using that beautiful invader now
one day this is a one of my more
abstract ideas one day I was
sleep-deprived delirious staring into
this compost wondering how it could
smell so citrusy
when I discovered that the Brewers we
have a brewery brilliant
gallant bunch of lads that make all of
our drinks and bring them in
reusable kegs and they had deposited 60
kilos of organic lemon waste into Bertha
it looks to me like compost but it
smells like lemon and interestingly to
note this lemon hood was like the third
layer of waste
they had intercepted which means the
lemons were rejected from the
supermarket for superficial reasons so
they had stopped it from going to
landfill from to waste they then made a
phenomenal batch of lemonade or whatever
it was they were making and then scratch
it a scattered it all so we were
receiving third layer of waste of lemons
and then putting it into into Bertha and
maybe it’s because of the sleep
deprivation
maybe I’m just I was just thinking
outside the box that day but it made
sense to cook these carrots that I had
that day in the compost which which
sounds crazy so this was this was the
sixty kilos of organic lemon waste going
into Bertha and then just 24 hours later
when that lemon weight had broke down
into into her compost we had lemony
compost which then we baked these
carrots in now as obscure as this is
these carrots tasted of lemon it was the
best kind of lemon it was beautiful and
elegant and fragrant and bright but not
too acidic you had this natural
sweetness from this carrot this
this actually turned into a dish and
this dish I served at a an event which
without any question was the most
important event of my life I was cooking
this dish for my my hero
so I’m not saying that cooking carrots
in compost is the the answer to life’s
problems however maybe a shift in
perspective might reveal some of those
answers with a problem like waste you
can look too closely at it what I’m
suggesting is to take a step back and to
see the bigger picture we’ve designed
waste into this world and I believe in
fact I’m certain we can design waste out
again thank you
[Applause]
[Applause]
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