Ollie Hunter - Join the Greener Revolution

I accidentally became a chef really, not through ambition, but because of my love of nature. It is this passion that led my wife and I to buy a pub (a mad decision in hindsight), with the sole aim of making it the most sustainable pub in Britain (something we achieved in 2019). It gave us a place to be experimental in solving problems around food waste, leading to creative solutions and delicious, sustainable food. The greatest thing we have learned on our journey is that food is so intrinsically linked to nature and the natural cycles. We are all part of the constantly changing and evolving energy that is planet Earth. It is its own person, and we have been granted the fortune to be a part of its history.

My first book, 30 Easy Ways to Join the Food Revolution, was dedicated to helping anyone become a sustainable food ambassador. I explained that everything we waste, we end up eating for example, if we waste plastic it will enter the food chain by breaking down in the sea; fish then eat it and we consume the fish. If we spray pesticides on our vegetables, we end up eating those chemicals too. In this book, Ill be taking that message further and explaining how everything we waste in our daily lives, we also absorb in another way, whether its the plastics from washing our clothes or the chemicals in the paint on the walls of our bedrooms. The Greener Revolution is a plan to help you become a sustainable ambassador in all areas of life.

Because food is an integral part of a sustainable life, and of my life, this remains a cookbook at its heart. There are new recipes, techniques and ways of thinking to help you eat more delicious, cheaper and more sustainable food.

Cooking is one simple thing we can all do, but I realize that suddenly transforming the rest of your life to become more sustainable isnt as easy as getting a new look at the hairdressers (although you could collect all your waste hair and use it in your compost as its so high in nitrogen), so Ive chopped up the solution into 30 bite-size ways, for you to digest slowly and make the changes as and when you can. These are separated further by being split into three chapters: Home, Community and World. The idea is that we start by making changes at home, then in our community and finally thinking about how our changes can affect the rest of the world. Ill be using the tree analogy (see ) to show how these three stages of change are inextricably linked, and how they connect with one another in a very important way.

Well also be taking the three key principles of the Food Revolution (from my first book) and applying them here too. These are:

Zero waste Everything we do has the ability to produce zero waste. Either by finding uses for by-products or by recycling the waste properly back into the system that we all belong to. Zero waste is a way of making more with less.

Organic This isnt just a restaurant tagline or an extra 20% on your food bill, its choosing to buy products whose raw materials havent been sprayed with chemicals that kill our ecosystem from the bottom up. Organic produce can be affordable if we cook sustainably, and likewise choosing organic in other areas of life can be affordable if we live sustainably.

50% from within 30 miles If we all take responsibility for investing in our own 30-mile vicinity, then the whole world will work at its best and we will create a strong and positive future for our species. The motto to remember for this principle is connect globally, live locally everyone needs to do their job on a local level to ensure that we all flourish globally. Because everything we do impacts everyone and everything.

I want to start this book with a tree. The same metaphorical tree I described in my last book that gave us the important motto connect globally, live locally.

A tree shares its life with more than just itself it shares it with the animals in its branches and the insects in its bark and leaves. It shares its life with the carbon dioxide it takes in and the oxygen it gives out, and with the water and the soil. It shares its life with bacteria and mould, with teeny-tiny organisms. It shares its life with the mycelium (a web of thin as thread fungal organisms). A tree is only able to flourish if each of these codependent relationships is working at its best. It needs them and they need it. These relationships range from the obvious happenings, to the microscopic ones and the ones that we havent even discovered yet. This mutually beneficial transference of energy is like magic.

Humans are the same we are intrinsically linked to everything on this planet. We are a constantly changing product of whats happening around us and whats happening in us. We rely on complex relationships with nature every second of every day. The energy that we give to the world will come back to affect us, as we are all part of the same ecosystem. Everything we do on Earth somehow impacts everyone and everything. If everyone in the world makes their homes sustainable on a local level, then each home is a strong and positive link in the global web of codependent relationships. If everyone makes their community sustainable, then the system becomes even stronger as a whole. If everyone made their vision of the world sustainable, then we allow ourselves to fully flourish as the wonderful and amazing species that we are.

The Greener Revolution is all about celebrating and making the most of this infinite connection that we have no choice over. We are all part of the same beautiful planet, and by making the energy that we transfer sustainable, we are making ourselves the best we can be.